Cosmic String Signatures in the Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies

Abstract

We briefly review certain aspects of cosmic microwave background anisotropies as generated in passive and active models of structure formation. We then focus on cosmic strings based models and discuss their status in the light of current high-resolution observations from the BOOMERanG, MAXIMA and DASI collaborations. Upcoming megapixel experiments will have the potential to look for non-Gaussian features in the CMB temperature maps with unprecedented accuracy. We therefore devote the last part of this review to treat the non-Gaussianity of the microwave background and present a method for computation of the bispectrum from simulated string realizations.

Comments: Review article to appear in the special issue of New Astronomy Reviews dedicated to the memory of Dennis William Sciama, eds. Francesco Melchiorri, Yoel Rephaeli and Joseph Silk