Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS
Volume 117, Issue 13, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.131302
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Funding
- Perren Fund
- IMPACT fund
- RAS Small Grant Scheme
- Science and Technology Facilities Council in the UK
- Royal Society
- European Research Council under the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) / ERC [306478-CosmicDawn]
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/M011852/1]
- NASA Office of Space Science
- ESA Member States
- NASA
- EPSRC [EP/M011852/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- STFC [ST/N000811/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/M011852/1] Funding Source: researchfish
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A fundamental assumption in the standard model of cosmology is that the Universe is isotropic on large scales. Breaking this assumption leads to a set of solutions to Einstein's field equations, known as Bianchi cosmologies, only a subset of which have ever been tested against data. For the first time, we consider all degrees of freedom in these solutions to conduct a general test of isotropy using cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization data from Planck. For the vector mode (associated with vorticity), we obtain a limit on the anisotropic expansion of (sigma(V)/H)(0) < 4.7 x 10(-11) (95% C. L.), which is an order of magnitude tighter than previous Planck results that used cosmic microwave background temperature only. We also place upper limits on other modes of anisotropic expansion, with the weakest limit arising from the regular tensor mode, (sigma(T),reg/ H)(0) < 1.0 x 10(-6) (95% C. L.). Including all degrees of freedom simultaneously for the first time, anisotropic expansion of the Universe is strongly disfavored, with odds of 121 000:1 against.
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