A Limit on the Inhomogeneity of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation at an Angular Scale of 1.25 Arcmin

Author: Pigg, Jay Cee

Year: 1976

Degree: Dissertation (Ph.D.)

Advisor: Moffet, Alan Theodore

Committee Member: Unknown, Unknown

Option: Astronomy

DOI: 10.7907/RJMF-HZ44

Abstract

NOTE: Text or symbols not renderable in plain ASCII are indicated by [...]. Abstract is included in .pdf document.

An observational upper limit to the inhomogeneity of the cosmic background radiation of [...]T/T [...] 7.4 x 10[...] on an angular scale of 1.25 arcmin was obtained at a wavelength of 2.0 cm. This and Pariiskii's (1973, Astron. Zh., 50, 453 [Sov. Astron., 17, 291]) limit of [...]T/T [...] 4.8 x 10[...] at 22 arcmin define the observational upper limit to [...]T/T for all scales 1° or less. Constraints are placed on published models of galaxy formation and 1000-Mpc scale clustering. Hypotheses that fluctuations in the background radiation could be caused by random fluctuations in the number of protogalaxies in a given solid angle, and that reionization of the intergalactic medium could be associated with the collapse of protogalaxies are shown to be consistent with the observations. Any discrete source model for the origin of the radiation would require more than 100 times as many sources as there are galaxies.

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