Probing the CMB cold spot through local Minkowski functionals

Both the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe （WMAP） and Planck missions have reported an extremely cold spot （CS） centered at Galactic coordinate （1 = 209°, b = -57°） in the cosmic microwave background map. We study the lo- cal non-Gaussianity of the CS by defining local Minkowski functionals. We f...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inResearch in astronomy and astrophysics Vol. 14; no. 6; pp. 625 - 634
Main Author Zhao, Wen
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published 01.06.2014
Subjects
Astronomy
Confidence intervals
Cosmic microwave background
Functionals
Microwaves
Spots
Surface layer
Texture
WMAP
冷点
威尔金森微波各向异性探测器
宇宙微波
置信水平
闵可夫斯基
非高斯
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN1674-4527
2397-6209
2397-6209
DOI10.1088/1674-4527/14/6/002

Cover

More Information
Summary:Both the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe （WMAP） and Planck missions have reported an extremely cold spot （CS） centered at Galactic coordinate （1 = 209°, b = -57°） in the cosmic microwave background map. We study the lo- cal non-Gaussianity of the CS by defining local Minkowski functionals. We find that the third Minkowski functional v2 is quite sensitive to the non-Gaussianity caused by the CS. Compared with random Gaussian simulations, the WMAP CS deviates from Gaussianity at more than a 99% confidence level with a scale of R - 10°. Meanwhile, we find that cosmic texture provides an excellent explanation for these anomalies re- lated to the WMAP CS, which could be further tested by future polarization data.
Bibliography:cosmology： cosmic microwave background
Both the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe （WMAP） and Planck missions have reported an extremely cold spot （CS） centered at Galactic coordinate （1 = 209°, b = -57°） in the cosmic microwave background map. We study the lo- cal non-Gaussianity of the CS by defining local Minkowski functionals. We find that the third Minkowski functional v2 is quite sensitive to the non-Gaussianity caused by the CS. Compared with random Gaussian simulations, the WMAP CS deviates from Gaussianity at more than a 99% confidence level with a scale of R - 10°. Meanwhile, we find that cosmic texture provides an excellent explanation for these anomalies re- lated to the WMAP CS, which could be further tested by future polarization data.
11-5721/P
ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:1674-4527
2397-6209
2397-6209
DOI:10.1088/1674-4527/14/6/002