Article
Nature 404, 955-959 (27 April 2000) | doi:10.1038/35010035; Received 24 March 2000; Accepted 3 April 2000
A flat Universe from high-resolution maps of the cosmic microwave background radiation
P. de Bernardis1, P. A. R. Ade2, J. J. Bock3, J. R. Bond4, J. Borrill5,12, A. Boscaleri6, K. Coble7, B. P. Crill8, G. De Gasperis9, P. C. Farese7, P. G. Ferreira10, K. Ganga8,11, M. Giacometti1, E. Hivon8, V. V. Hristov8, A. Iacoangeli1, A. H. Jaffe12, A. E. Lange8, L. Martinis13, S. Masi1, P. V. Mason8, P. D. Mauskopf14,15, A. Melchiorri1, L. Miglio16, T. Montroy7, C. B. Netterfield16, E. Pascale6, F. Piacentini1, D. Pogosyan4, S. Prunet4, S. Rao17, G. Romeo17, J. E. Ruhl7, F. Scaramuzzi13, D. Sforna1 & N. Vittorio9
- Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita' di Roma "La Sapienza", P.le A. Moro 2, 00185 Roma, Italy.
- Department of Physics, Queen Mary and Westfield College , Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK.
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California 91109, USA.
- CITA University of Toronto, Toronto M5S 3H8, Canada.
- NERSC-LBNL, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
- IROE–CNR, Via Panciatichi 64, 50127 Firenze, Italy.
- Department of Physics, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106 , USA.
- California Institute of Technology, Mail Code 59-33, Pasadena, California 91125 , USA.
- Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita' di Roma Tor Vergata , Via della Ricerca Scientifica 1, 00133 Roma, Italy.
- Astrophysics, University of Oxford, Keble Road, OX1 3RH, UK.
- PCC, College de France, 11 pl. Marcelin Berthelot, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France .
- Center for Particle Astrophysics, University of California at Berkeley, 301 Le Conte Hall, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
- ENEA Centro Ricerche di Frascati, Via E. Fermi 45, 00044 Frascati, Italy.
- Physics and Astronomy Department, Cardiff University , Cardiff CF2 3YB, UK.
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003 , USA.
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Toronto, Toronto M5S 3H8, Canada.
- Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica, Via di Vigna Murata 605, 00143, Roma, Italy .
Correspondence to: P. de Bernardis1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to P. d. B. (e-mail: Email: debernardis@roma1.infn.it). Details of the experiment and numerical data sets are available at the web sites (http://oberon.roma1.infn.it/boomerang) and (http://www.physics.ucsb.edu/~boomerang).
Abstract
The blackbody radiation left over from the Big Bang has been transformed
by the expansion of the Universe into the nearly isotropic 2.73 K cosmic
microwave background. Tiny inhomogeneities in the early Universe left their
imprint on the microwave background in the form of small anisotropies in its
temperature. These anisotropies contain information about basic cosmological
parameters, particularly the total energy density and curvature of the Universe.
Here we report the first images of resolved structure in the microwave background
anisotropies over a significant part of the sky. Maps at four frequencies
clearly distinguish the microwave background from foreground emission. We
compute the angular power spectrum of the microwave background, and find a
peak at Legendre multipole lpeak = (197 
6), with an amplitude 
T200 = (69
8) 
K. This is consistent with that expected for
cold dark matter models in a flat (euclidean) Universe, as favoured by standard
inflationary models.
