The Cosmic Microwave Background

With the successful launch of the European Space Agency's Planck satellite earlier this year the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is once again the centre of attention for cosmologists around the globe. Since its accidental discovery in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, this relic of the Big Bang has been subjected to intense scrutiny by generation after generation of experiments and has gradually yielded up answers to the deepest questions about the origin of our Universe. Most recently, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has made a full-sky analysis of the pattern of temperature and polarization variations that helped establish a new standard cosmological model, confirmed the existence of dark matter and dark energy, and provided strong evidence that there was an epoch of primordial inflation. Ruth Durrer's book reflects the importance of the CMB for future developments in this field. Aimed at graduate students and established researchers, it consists of a basic introduction to cosmology and the theory of primordial perturbations followed by a detailed explanation of how these manifest themselves as measurable variations in the present-day radiation field. It then focuses on the statistical methods needed to obtain accurate estimates of the parameters of the standard cosmological model, and finishes with a discussion of the effect of gravitational lensing on the CMB and on the evolution of its spectrum. The book apparently grew out of various lecture notes on CMB anisotropies for graduate courses given by the author. Its level and scope are well matched to the needs of such an audience and the presentation is clear and well-organized. I am sure that this book will be a useful reference for more senior scientists too. If I have a criticism, it is not about what is in the book but what is omitted. In my view, one of the most exciting possibilities for future CMB missions, including Planck, is the possibility that they might discover physics beyond that which the current standard model can describe. 'Thinking outside the box' has become a cliche, but it is what graduate students should be encouraged to do. For example, the standard cosmological model entails the assumption, motivated by the simplest theories of inflation, that the primordial density fluctuations are described by Gaussian statistics. The detection of any deviations from Gaussian behaviour in the radiation field would therefore offer us an exciting window into the detailed physics of inflation or other departures from the standard model. Although primordial non-Gaussianity is an extremely active subject of contemporary cosmological research, it is barely mentioned in this book. This is a regrettable omission in an otherwise commendable volume.