English

The COBE Normalization of CMB Anisotropies

Astrophysics 2009-08-18 v3

Abstract

With the advent of the COBE detection of fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, the study of inhomogeneous cosmology has entered a new phase. It is now possible to accurately normalize fluctuations on the largest observable scales, in the linear regime. In this paper we present a model-independent method of normalizing theories to the full COBE data. This technique allows an extremely wide range of theories to be accurately normalized to COBE in a very simple and fast way. We give the best fitting normalization and relative peak likelihoods for a range of spectral shapes, and discuss the normalization for several popular theories. Additionally we present both Bayesian and frequentist measures of the goodness of fit of a representative range of theories to the COBE data.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9503054,
  title  = {The COBE Normalization of CMB Anisotropies},
  author = {Martin White and Emory F. Bunn},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9503054},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

References updated, one figure redrawn