Calculation of Cosmic Background Radiation Anisotropies and Implications

Abstract

We review the physical processes that are thought to produce anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background, focusing primarily (but not exclusively) on the effects of acoustic waves in the early Universe. We attempt throughout to supply an intuitive, physical picture of the key ideas and to elucidate the ways in which the predicted anisotropy depends on cosmological parameters such as Omega and h. The second half of these lectures is devoted to a discussion of microwave background data analysis techniques, with an emphasis on the analysis of the COBE DMR data. In particular, the Karhunen-Loeve method of data compression is described in detail.