Cosmic microwave background theory

Abstract

A long-standing goal of theorists has been to constrain cosmological parameters that define the structure formation theory from cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy experiments and large-scale structure (LSS) observations. The status and future promise of this enterprise is described. Current band-powers in -space are consistent with a DeltaT flat in frequency and broadly follow inflation-based expectations. That the levels are approximately (10(-5))2 provides strong support for the gravitational instability theory, while the Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) constraints on energy injection rule out cosmic explosions as a dominant source of LSS. Band-powers at 100 suggest that the universe could not have re-ionized too early. To get the LSS of Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE)-normalized fluctuations right provides encouraging support that the initial fluctuation spectrum was not far off the scale invariant form that inflation models prefer: e.g., for tilted Lambda cold dark matter sequences of fixed 13-Gyr age (with the Hubble constant H0 marginalized), ns = 1.17 +/- 0.3 for Differential Microwave Radiometer (DMR) only; 1.15 +/- 0.08 for DMR plus the SK95 experiment; 1.00 +/- 0.04 for DMR plus all smaller angle experiments; 1.00 +/- 0.05 when LSS constraints are included as well. The CMB alone currently gives weak constraints on Lambda and moderate constraints on Omegatot, but theoretical forecasts of future long duration balloon and satellite experiments are shown which predict percent-level accuracy among a large fraction of the 10+ parameters characterizing the cosmic structure formation theory, at least if it is an inflation variant.