English

Elliptic CMB Sky

Astrophysics 2009-11-10 v2

Abstract

The ellipticity of the anisotropy spots of the Cosmic Microwave Background measured by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has been studied. We find an average ellipticity of about 2, confirming with a far larger statistics similar results found first for the COBE-DMR CMB maps, and then for the BOOMERanG CMB maps. There are no preferred directions for the obliquity of the anisotropy spots. The average ellipticity is independent of temperature threshold and is present on scales both smaller and larger than the horizon at the last scattering. The measured ellipticity characteristics are consistent with being the effect of geodesics mixing occurring in an hyperbolic Universe, and can mark the emergence of CMB ellipticity as a new observable constant describing the Universe. There is no way of simulating this effect. Therefore we cannot exclude that the observed behavior of the measured ellipticity can result from a trivial topology in the popular flat Λ\Lambda-CDM model, or from a non-trivial topology.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0503103,
  title  = {Elliptic CMB Sky},
  author = {V. G. Gurzadyan and P. de Bernardis and G. De Troia and C. L. Bianco and A. L. Kashin and H. Kuloghlian and S. Masi and F. Piacentini and G. Polenta and G. Yegorian},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0503103},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

10 pages, 5 figures, the version to appear in Mod.Phys.Lett. A