Cosmic microwave background anisotropies from scaling seeds: Fit to observational data

We compute cosmic microwave background angular power spectra for scaling seed models of structure formation. A generic parametrization of the energy momentum tensor of the seeds is employed. We concentrate on two regions of parameter space inspired by global topological defects: O(4) texture models and the large-N limit of O(N) models. We use chi(2) fitting to compare these models to recent flat-band power measurements of the cosmic microwave background. Only scalar perturbations are considered. [S0031-9007(97)04954-5].