The WOMBAT Challenge: A "Hounds and Hares" Exercise for Cosmology
Abstract
The Wavelength-Oriented Microwave Background Analysis Team (WOMBAT) is constructing microwave skymaps which will be more realistic than previous simulations. Our foreground models represent a considerable improvement: where spatial templates are available for a given foreground, we predict the flux and spectral index of that component at each place on the sky and estimate the uncertainties in these quantities. We will produce maps containing simulated Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies combined with all major expected foreground components. The simulated maps will be provided to the cosmology community as the WOMBAT Challenge, a "hounds and hares" exercise where such maps can be analyzed to extract cosmological parameters by scientists who are unaware of their input values. This exercise will test the efficacy of current foreground subtraction, power spectrum analysis, and parameter estimation techniques and will help identify the areas most in need of progress.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9812237,
title = {The WOMBAT Challenge: A "Hounds and Hares" Exercise for Cosmology},
author = {Eric Gawiser and Douglas Finkbeiner and Andrew Jaffe and Joanne C. Baker and Amedeo Balbi and Marc Davis and Shaul Hanany and William Holzapfel and Leonidas Moustakas and James Robinson and Evan Scannapieco and George F. Smoot and Joseph Silk},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9812237},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
11 pages, details of Challenge exercise and foreground models available at http://astro.berkeley.edu/wombat