ASTR 3740 Spring 2020 Cosmic Microwave Background

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Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)

Click on any image to find the original source.

History

The CMB was discovered serendipitously by Bob Wilson and Arno Penzias in 1964 (Nobel prize 1978)

Wilson and Penzias in front of the Holmdel Horn Antenna, Bell Labs, New Jersey

The CMB had been contemporaneously predicted theoretically by Bob Dicke's group at Princeton

Graph from Dicke et al ApJ Lett paper

Title of Penzias & Wilson ApJ Letters paper

COsmic Background Explorer (COBE) map (1993)

COsmic Background Explorer (COBE) spectrum (1989)

The resulting CMB temperature (Fixen 2009)

T₀ = 2.7255 ± .0006 K

Maps from balloon-borne instruments (2000/2001)

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DASI

WMAP Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (2003)

WMAP total

WMAP including dipole

WMAP fluctuations

WMAP Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (2006)

WMAP Polarization

WMAP Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (2008)

Planck Satellite (2013)

WMAP Power Spectrum (2003)

WMAP Power Spectrum (2006)

TE EE ···BB Polarization

WMAP Power Spectrum (2008)

Planck + WMAP + Atacama Cosmology Telescope + South Pole Telescope Power Spectrum (2013)

The horizontal scale is logarithmic up to l = 100, linear thereafter.

Dependence of CMB power on cosmological parameters (Hu & Dodelson 2002)

ASTR 3740 Spring 2020 Homepage

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Updated 2020 Apr 13