Related papers: Too few spots in the cosmic microwave background
We investigate the large scale anomalies in the angular distribution of the cosmic microwave background radiation as measured by WMAP using several tests. These tests, based on the multipole vector expansion, measure correlations between…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) are of great importance for cosmology. In previous work we had developed a pipeline for map-making independently of the WMAP team.…
A great deal of attention has been given to the so-called Cold Spot in maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature. We present a similar analysis, searching for extremal spots in the CMB lensing convergence and lensing…
To minimize instrumentally induced systematic errors, cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy experiments measure temperature differences across the sky using paires of horn antennas, temperature map is recovered from temperature…
We present measurements of the clustering of hot and cold patches in the microwave background sky as measured from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) five-year data. These measurements are compared with theoretical predictions…
We investigate some of the asymmetries reported in the CMB temperature angular distribution considering the {\Lambda}CDM model in the 3, 5 and 7 year WMAP data. We aim to analyze the 4 quadrants of the ILC CMB maps using 3 Galactic cuts:…
We detect a dip of 20-45% in the surface brightness and number counts of NVSS sources smoothed to a few degrees at the location of the WMAP cold spot. The dip has structure on scales of approximately 1-10 degrees. Together with independent…
We present a simple inflationary scenario that can produce arbitrarily large spherical underdense or overdense regions embedded in a standard Lambda cold dark matter paradigm, which we refer to as bubbles. We analyze the effect such bubbles…
Several anomalies appear to be present in the large-angle cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy maps of WMAP, including the alignment of large-scale multipoles. Models in which isotropy is spontaneously broken (e.g., by a scalar…
I discuss whether the standard cosmological models fit the WMAP data well enough to justify parameter estimation with standard assumptions. The observed quadrupole is low (but has significant foreground uncertainty) and drives weak evidence…
We report and analyse the presence of foregrounds in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation associated to extended galactic halos. Using the cross correlation of Planck and WMAP maps and the 2MRS galaxy catalogue, we find that the…
We investigate recent claims for a detection of "Hawking points" (positions on the sky with unusually large temperature gradients between rings) in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps at the 99.98% confidence level. We…
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…
The Kolmogorov stochasticity parameter (KSP) is applied to quantify the degree of randomness (stochasticity) in the temperature maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation maps. It is shown that, the KSP for the WMAP5 maps is about…
We reassess the evidence that WMAP temperature maps contain a statistically significant "cold spot" by repeating the analysis using simple circular top-hat (disk) weights, as well as Gaussian weights of varying width. Contrary to previous…
Density perturbations at the decoupling epoch produce angular fluctuations in the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation that may appear as hot and cold spots. Observational data of the CMB includes instrumental…
The largest uncollapsed inhomogeneity in the observable Universe is statistically represented in the quadrupole signal of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) sky maps as observed by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). The…
We have studied the cosmic microwave background (CMB) map looking for features beyond cosmological isotropy. We began by tiling the CMB variance map (which are produced by different smoothing scales) with stripes of different sizes along…
We investigate the angular two-point correlation function of temperature in the WMAP maps. Updating and extending earlier results, we confirm the lack of correlations outside the Galaxy on angular scales greater than about 60 degrees at a…
The recent three-year WMAP data have confirmed the anomaly concerning the low quadrupole amplitude compared to the best-fit \Lambda CDM prediction. We show that, allowing the large-scale spatial geometry of our universe to be…