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E. Bertschinger (Department of Physics, MIT)
Fluctuations in the microwave background radiation are the most important probe we have of the early universe. This paper explains the essential processes that determine the pattern of microwave background anisotropies as acoustic waves propagating in the radiation-baryon fluid. Integrating the dynamical equations in configuration space, as opposed to the conventional Fourier decomposition, we find a feature in the CMB temperature autocorrelation function arising from singularities in the Green's functions. It is this feature that is responsible for the acoustic peaks in the angular power spectrum Cl. We argue that the real space approach also offers advantages for CMB experimental data analysis. This work forms part of the PhD thesis of MIT graduate student Sergei V. Bashinsky.