Measuring the Topology of the Universe

Abstract

Observations of microwave background fluctuations can yield information not only about the geometry of the universe, but potentially about the topology of the universe. If the universe is negatively curved, then the characteristic scale for the topology of the universe is the curvature radius. Thus, if we are seeing the effects of the geometry of the universe, we can hope to soon see signatures of the topology of the universe. The cleanest signature of the topology of the universe is written on the microwave sky: there should be thousands of pairs of matched circles. These circles can be used to determine the precise topology and volume of the universe. Since we see hundreds of slices through the fundamental domain of the universe, we can use the microwave observations to reconstruct the initial conditions of the entire universe on the scale of a few Megaparsecs.

11 pages, LaTex, Talk at NAS Cosmology Conference, Irvine, CA, March 1997

References in corpus (2)

• Constraining Omega with Cluster Evolution
• The Velocity Field from Type Ia Supernovae Matches the Gravity Field from Galaxy Surveys

Cited by in corpus (27)

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• Large-angle anomalies in the CMB
• The Cosmic Microwave Background and Particle Physics
• Constraints on the Topology of the Universe: Extension to General Geometries
• Detectability of Cosmic Topology in Almost Flat Universes
• Are Small Hyperbolic Universes Observationally Detectable?
• A Topological Signature in Cosmic Topology
• Temperature correlations in a compact hyperbolic universe
• The Structure and Interpretation of Cosmology: Part I - General Relativistic Cosmology
• Constraints on the Detectability of Cosmic Topology from Observational Uncertainties
• Cosmic topology. Part I. Limits on orientable Euclidean manifolds from circle searches
• Detectability of Cosmic Topology in Flat Universes
• Designer de Sitter Spacetimes
• Cosmic topology. Part IIa. Eigenmodes, correlation matrices, and detectability of orientable Euclidean manifolds
• Distinguishing Marks of Simply-connected Universes
• Exploring suppressed long-distance correlations as the cause of suppressed large-angle correlations
• Geometric Gaussianity and Non-Gaussianity in the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Signature for the Shape of the Universe
• The shape of a small universe: signatures in the cosmic microwave background
• Orbifold Line Topology and the Cosmic Microwave Background
• The No-defect Conjecture: Cosmological Implications
• Cosmic topology. Part IVa. Classification of manifolds using machine learning: a case study with small toroidal universes
• Searching for Stringy Topologies in the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Cosmic topology. Part Ic. Limits on lens spaces from circle searches
• Recovering the geometry of a flat spacetime from background radiation
• Cosmic topology. Part IIIb. Eigenmodes and correlation matrices of spin-2 perturbations in orientable Euclidean manifolds
• New Cosmological Model and Its Implications on Observational Data Interpretation