Texture-induced microwave background anisotropies

We use numerical simulations to calculate the cosmic microwave background anisotropy induced by the evolution of a global texture field, with special emphasis on individual textures. Both spherically symmetric and general configurations are analyzed, and in the latter case we consider field configurations which exhibit unwinding events and also ones which do not. We compare the results given by evolving the field numerically under both the expanded core (XCORE) and nonlinear σ model (NLSM) approximations with the analytic predictions of the NLSM exact solution for a spherically symmetric self-similar (SSSS) unwinding. We find that the random unwinding configuration spots' typical peak height is 60--75 % and angular size typically only 10% of those of the SSSS unwinding, and that random configurations without an unwinding event nonetheless may generate indistinguishable hot and cold spots. A brief comparison is made with other work