English

The Axis of Evil revisited

Astrophysics 2008-11-26 v2

Abstract

In light of the three-year data release from WMAP we re-examine the evidence for the ``Axis of Evil'' (AOE). We discover that previous statistics are not robust with respect to the data-sets available and different treatments of the galactic plane. We identify the cause of the instability and implement an alternative ``model selection'' approach. A comparison to Gaussian isotropic simulations find the features significant at the 94-98% level, depending on the particular AOE model. The Bayesian evidence finds lower significance, ranging from ``substantial'' at Δ(lnE)1.4\Delta(\ln E)\sim 1.4, to no evidence for the most general AOE model.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0611518,
  title  = {The Axis of Evil revisited},
  author = {Kate Land and Joao Magueijo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0611518},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

7 pages, accepted to MNRAS