Approximating the Likelihood Function of CMB Experiments

J. G. Bartlett; A. Blanchard; M. Douspis; M. Le Dour

Approximating the Likelihood Function of CMB Experiments

Astrophysics 2007-05-23 v1

Authors: J. G. Bartlett , A. Blanchard , M. Douspis , M. Le Dour

Abstract

We discuss the problem of constraining cosmological parameters with cosmic microwave background band--power estimates. Because these latter are variances, they do not have gaussian distribution functions and, hence, the standard $\chi^2$ --approach is not strictly applicable. A general purpose approximation to experimental band--power likelihood functions is proposed, which requires only limited experimental details. Comparison with the full likelihood function calculated for several experiments shows that the approximation works well.

Keywords

cosmic microwave background cosmological power spectrum cosmology

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9810316,
  title  = {Approximating the Likelihood Function of CMB Experiments},
  author = {J. G. Bartlett and A. Blanchard and M. Douspis and M. Le Dour},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9810316},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

To be published in ``The CMB and the Planck Mission'', proceedings of a workshop held in Santander, Spain, June 1998

Approximating the Likelihood Function of CMB Experiments

Abstract

Keywords

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