Present and Future of the Cosmic Microwave Background

The CMB spectrum at centimeter wavelengths.- Recent measurements of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect.- Clusters and the cosmic microwave background.- Theoretical aspects of the CMB spectrum.- Medium scale CBR anisotropy measurements: UCSB South Pole HEMT (1990-91) and MAX 3 (1991).- Results from the cosmic background explorer.- The MSAM/TopHat program for measuring the CMBR anisotropy.- The current status of the tenerife experiments and prospects for the future..- Making maps with the tenerife data.- Anisotropy of the relic radiation in relict-1 experiment and parameters of grand unification.- RELIKT1 and COBS-DMR results: A comparison.- Comments on the COBE 1 DMR quadrupole estimation.- Pip analysis of the Tenerife and ULISSE data.- Telling adiabatic perturbations from gravitational waves and the CMB polarization.- Imprints of galaxy clustering evolution on the CMB.- Analysis of texture on cosmic background maps.- Sakharov modulation of the spectrum of initial perturbations and its manifestation in the anisotropy of cosmic microwave background and galaxy correlation function.- Constraints on models from POTENT and CMB anisotropies.- Reionization and the cosmic microwave background.- Possible reionization and first structures in CDM.- CMB anisotropies in the reionized universe.- Microwave background anisotropies: Future plans.- New constraints on reionization from the Compton y-parameter.- Future projects on the Cosmic Microwave Background.- The COBRAS mission.

The study of cosmic background radiation is of outstanding importance for our understanding of the universe. This volume reviews the field, emphasizing the observational data.