Topological Defect Models of Structure Formation After the COBE Discovery of CMB Anisotropies

Abstract

The COBE satellite has discovered anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) consistent with a scale invariant spectrum of density perturbations. As reviewed in this lecture, topological defect models of structure formation generically produce such a spectrum. We give a summary of the cosmic string and global texture models, focusing on distinct observational signatures in large-scale structure surveys and in the microwave background. It is shown that the amplitude of the CMB quadrupole detected by COBE is in good agreement with the predictions of the cosmic string model.

25 pages, 10 figures (available from the author), uses phyzzx

References in corpus (2)

• COBE's Constraints on the Global Monopole and Texture Theories of Cosmic Structure Formation
• Microwave Anisotropies from Texture Seeded Structure Formation

Cited by in corpus (7)

• A Cosmic String Specific Signature on the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Spectral Analysis of Microwave Background Perturbations Induced by Cosmic Strings
• On the Statistics of CMB Fluctuations Induced by Topological Defects
• The Fourier Space Statistics of Seedlike Cosmological Perturbations
• Searching for Long Strings in CMB Maps
• Signatures of Cosmic Strings on the Microwave Background
• A New Statistic for the Detection of Long Strings in Microwave Background Maps