Related papers: Lack of angular correlation and odd-parity prefere…
Using a nonparametric function estimation methodology, we present a comparative analysis of the WMAP 1-, 3-, 5-, and 7-year data releases for the CMB angular power spectrum with respect to the following key questions: (a) How well is the…
Recent observations suggest that there are violations of the isotropy of the universe at large scales, an important part of the cosmological principle. In this paper, we use the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data to search for spatial…
We apply the Gabor transform methodology proposed in (Hansen et al. 2002, 2003) to the WMAP data in order to test the statistical properties of the CMB fluctuation field and specifically to evaluate the fundamental assumption of…
Cosmological observations on the largest scales exhibit a solid record of unexpected anomalies and alignments, apparently pointing towards a large scale violation of statistical isotropy. These include a variety of CMB measurements, as well…
New analysis confirms our earlier claim [1], [7] of circles of notably low temperature variance, often in concentric sets, in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), discernable in WMAP data. Their reality can be interpreted as evidence of…
We perform an analysis of the CMB temperature data taken by the Planck satellite investigating if there is any significant deviation from cosmological isotropy. We look for differences in the spectrum between two opposite hemispheres and…
We search for an unusual alignment of the preferred axes of the quadrupole and octopole, the so-called axis of evil, in the CMB temperature and polarization data from WMAP. We use the part of the polarization map which is uncorrelated with…
We constrain the rotation angle $\alpha$ of the linear polarization of CMB photons using the large angular scale (up to $\sim 4^\circ$) signal in WMAP 7 year data. At these scales, the CMB polarization pattern probes mostly the reionization…
Statistical isotropy (SI) has been one of the simplifying assumptions in cosmological model building. Experiments like WMAP and PLANCK are attempting to test this assumption by searching for specific signals in the Cosmic Microwave…
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…
The recent Planck data on the power spectrum of temperature anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background marginally support deviations from the $\Lambda$CDM model at several multipoles. With a view towards current and forthcoming…
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…
[Abridged] We apply the multipole vector framework to full-sky maps derived from the first year WMAP data. We significantly extend our earlier work showing that the two lowest cosmologically interesting multipoles, l=2 and 3, are not…
Although individual observational groups vigorously test their data sets for systematic errors, the pre-WMAP CMB observational data set has not yet been collectively tested. Under the assumption that the concordance model is the correct…
Unexpected features have been observed in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature on large scales. We revisit these CMB anomalies using new foreground-cleaned CMB temperature maps derived in a companion paper from WMAP and Planck…
Analyses of recent cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations have provided increasing indications for the existence of large scale anisotropy in the universe. Given the far reaching consequences of such an anisotropy for our…
Analysis of the Planck 2018 data set indicates that the statistical properties of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies are in excellent agreement with previous studies using the 2013 and 2015 data releases. In…
We present a CMB temperature power spectrum measurement at large angular scales from WMAP and Planck maps that were cleaned of foregrounds using a template-based approach described in a companion paper. We recover essentially the full-sky…
Recent claims in the literature have suggested that the {\it WMAP} quadrupole is not primordial in origin, and arises from an aliasing of the much larger dipole field because of incorrect satellite pointing. We attempt to reproduce this…
While the standard, six-parameter, spatially flat $\Lambda$CDM model has been highly successful, certain anomalies in the cosmic microwave background bring out a tension between this model and observations. The statistical significance of…