English

How Sensitive is the CMB to a Single Lens?

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2015-05-28 v2

Abstract

We study the imprints of a single lens, that breaks statistical isotropy, on the CMB and calculate the signal to noise ratio (S/N) for its detection. We emphasize the role of non-Gaussianities induced by LCDM weak lensing in this calculation and show that typically the S/N is much smaller than expected. In particular we find that the hypothesis that a void (texture) is responsible for the WMAP cold spot can barely (cannot) be tested via weak lensing of the CMB.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1105.2940,
  title  = {How Sensitive is the CMB to a Single Lens?},
  author = {Ben Rathaus and Anastasia Fialkov and Nissan Itzhaki},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1105.2940},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in JCAP, 24 pages, 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T18:07:32.049Z