Related papers: A comparison of CMB Angular Power Spectrum Estimat…
We present a method for measuring CMB polarization power spectra given incomplete sky coverage and test it with simulated examples such as Boomerang 2001 and MAP. By augmenting the quadratic estimator method with an additional step, we find…
The CMB is perhaps the cleanest cosmological observable. Given a cosmology model, the angular spectrum of the CMB can be computed to percent accuracy. On the observational side, as far as we know, there is little that stands in the way…
In this paper, we investigate quasi-maximum likelihood (QML) estimation for the parameters of a cointegrated solution of a continuous-time linear state space model observed at discrete time points. The class of cointegrated solutions of…
In addition to its spectrum and temperature anisotropy, the 2.7K Cosmic Microwave Background is also expected to exhibit a low level of polarization. The spatial power spectrum of the polarization can provide details about the formation of…
We investigate the hemispherical power asymmetry in the cosmic microwave background on small angular scales. We find an anomalously high asymmetry in the multipole range l=601-2048, with a naive statistical significance of 6.5 sigma.…
We extend the ILC method in harmonic space to include the error in its CMB estimate. This allows parameter estimation routines to take into account the effect of the foregrounds as well as the errors in their subtraction in conjunction with…
We introduce a new CMB temperature likelihood approximation called the Gaussianized Blackwell-Rao (GBR) estimator. This estimator is derived by transforming the observed marginal power spectrum distributions obtained by the CMB Gibbs…
We describe a class of observational strategies for probing the anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) where the instrument scans on rings which can be combined into an n-torus, the {\em ring torus}. This class has the…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) power spectrum derived from the first year WMAP data demonstrates an intriguing lack of power at large scales that cannot be accounted for within the framework of the standard cosmological model. We…
We undertake a detailed study of the performance of maximum likelihood (ML) estimators of the density matrix of finite-dimensional quantum systems, in order to interrogate generic properties of frequentist quantum state estimation. Existing…
We describe and compare two types of microwave sky simulations which are good for small angular scales. The first type uses expansions in spherical harmonics, and the second one is based on plane waves and the Fast Fourier Transform. The…
Measurement of the largest angular scale ($\ell < 30$) features of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization is a powerful way to constrain the optical depth to reionization and search for the signature of inflation through the…
We report on the first flight of the balloon-borne QMAP experiment. The experiment is designed to make a map of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy on angular scales from 0.7 to several degrees. Using the map we determine the angular…
Constraining cosmological parameters from measurements of the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect requires developing robust and accurate methods for computing statistical errors in the cross-correlation between maps. This paper presents a…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy power on the largest angular scales observed both by WMAP and COBE DMR appears to be lower than the one predicted by the standard model of cosmology with almost scale free primordial…
The CMB maps obtained by observations always possess domains which have to be masked due to severe uncertainties with respect to the genuine CMB signal. Cosmological analyses ideally use full CMB maps in order to get e.g. the angular power…
We investigate sets of random variables that can be arranged sequentially such that a given variable only depends conditionally on its immediate predecessor. For such sets, we show that the full joint probability distribution may be…
We investigate the use of estimators of weak lensing power spectra based on a flat-sky implementation of the Pseudo-Cl (PCl) technique, where the masked shear field is transformed without regard for masked regions of sky. This masking mixes…
We present an implementation of an optimal CMB trispectrum estimator which accounts for anisotropic noise and incomplete sky coverage. We use a general separable mode expansion which can and has been applied to constrain both primordial and…
Angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies is one of the most important on characteristics of the Universe such as its geometry and total density. Using flat sky approximation and Fourier…