Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies from Scaling Seeds: Fit to Observational Data

Abstract

We compute cosmic microwave background angular power spectra for scaling seed models of structure formation. A generic parameterization of the energy momentum tensor of the seeds is employed. We concentrate on two regions of parameter space inspired by global topological defects: O(4) texture models and the large-N limit of O(N) models. We use $\ddot{I}{‡}^2$ fitting to compare these models to recent flat-band power measurements of the cosmic microwave background. Only scalar perturbations are considered.

LaTeX file 4 pages, 4 postscript figs. revised version, to appear in PRL