Exploring Topology of the Universe in the Cosmic Microwave Background

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the universe's global topology affects CMB temperature fluctuations, suggesting that certain topologies can explain observed anomalies like the low quadrupole and predicting observable signatures such as matching circles and non-Gaussianities.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the impact of multiply connected topologies on CMB anisotropies, highlighting their potential to explain anomalies and proposing observational tests for non-trivial topology.

Findings

Low matter density models can produce large-angle fluctuations consistent with observations.

Certain topologies naturally explain the low quadrupole anomaly in the CMB.

Matching circles and non-Gaussian features are potential signatures of non-trivial topology.

Abstract

We study the effect of global topology of the spatial geometry on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) for closed flat and closed hyperbolic models in which the spatial hypersurface is multiply connected. If the CMB temperature fluctuations were entirely produced at the last scattering, then the large-angle fluctuations would be much suppressed in comparison with the simply connected counterparts which is at variance with the observational data. However, as we shall show in this thesis, for low matter density models the observational constraints are less stringent since a large amount of large-angle fluctuations could be produced at late times. On the other hand, a slight suppression in large-angle temperature correlations in such models explains rather naturally the observed anomalously low quadrupole which is incompatible with the prediction of the "standard" Friedmann-Robertson-Walker-Lemaitre models. Interestingly, moreover, the development in the astronomical observation technology has made it possible to directly explore the imprint of the non-trivial topology by looking for identical objects so called "ghosts" in wide separated directions. For the CMB temperature fluctuations identical patterns would appear on a pair of circles in the sky. Another interesting feature is the non-Gaussianity in the temperature fluctuations. Inhomogeneous and anisotropic Gaussian fluctuations for a particular choice of position and orientation are regarded as non-Gaussian fluctuations for a homogeneous and isotropic ensemble.