We revisit the observational constraints on spatial curvature following
recent claims that the Planck data favour a closed Universe. We use a new and
statistically powerful Planck likelihood to show that the Planck temperature
and polarization spectra are consistent with a spatially flat Universe, though
because of a geometrical degeneracy cosmic microwave background spectra on
their own do not lead to tight constraints on the curvature density parameter
Omega_K. When combined with other astrophysical data, particularly geometrical
measurements of baryon acoustic oscillations, the Universe is constrained to be
spatially flat to extremely high precision, with Omega_ K = 0.0004 +/-0.0018 in
agreement with the 2018 results of the Planck team. In the context of
inflationary cosmology, the observations offer strong support for models of
inflation with a large number of e-foldings and disfavour models of incomplete
inflation.
%0 Generic
%1 efstathiou2020evidence
%A Efstathiou, George
%A Gratton, Steven
%D 2020
%K library
%T The evidence for a spatially flat Universe
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/2002.06892
%X We revisit the observational constraints on spatial curvature following
recent claims that the Planck data favour a closed Universe. We use a new and
statistically powerful Planck likelihood to show that the Planck temperature
and polarization spectra are consistent with a spatially flat Universe, though
because of a geometrical degeneracy cosmic microwave background spectra on
their own do not lead to tight constraints on the curvature density parameter
Omega_K. When combined with other astrophysical data, particularly geometrical
measurements of baryon acoustic oscillations, the Universe is constrained to be
spatially flat to extremely high precision, with Omega_ K = 0.0004 +/-0.0018 in
agreement with the 2018 results of the Planck team. In the context of
inflationary cosmology, the observations offer strong support for models of
inflation with a large number of e-foldings and disfavour models of incomplete
inflation.
@misc{efstathiou2020evidence,
abstract = {We revisit the observational constraints on spatial curvature following
recent claims that the Planck data favour a closed Universe. We use a new and
statistically powerful Planck likelihood to show that the Planck temperature
and polarization spectra are consistent with a spatially flat Universe, though
because of a geometrical degeneracy cosmic microwave background spectra on
their own do not lead to tight constraints on the curvature density parameter
Omega_K. When combined with other astrophysical data, particularly geometrical
measurements of baryon acoustic oscillations, the Universe is constrained to be
spatially flat to extremely high precision, with Omega_ K = 0.0004 +/-0.0018 in
agreement with the 2018 results of the Planck team. In the context of
inflationary cosmology, the observations offer strong support for models of
inflation with a large number of e-foldings and disfavour models of incomplete
inflation.},
added-at = {2020-02-18T13:35:40.000+0100},
author = {Efstathiou, George and Gratton, Steven},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/23a914d68b593a4d21e672d9057686db1/gpkulkarni},
description = {The evidence for a spatially flat Universe},
interhash = {36cdd85857745ca66c99146b3ad234f2},
intrahash = {3a914d68b593a4d21e672d9057686db1},
keywords = {library},
note = {cite arxiv:2002.06892Comment: submitted to MNRAS},
timestamp = {2020-02-18T13:35:40.000+0100},
title = {The evidence for a spatially flat Universe},
url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2002.06892},
year = 2020
}