Related papers: Is the Pre-WMAP CMB Data Self-consistent?
Ever since WMAP announced its first results, different analyses have shown that there is weak evidence for several large-scale anomalies in the CMB data. While the evidence for each anomaly appears to be weak, the fact that there are…
Several accurate analyses have revealed a statistically significant North-South ecliptic asymmetry in the large-angle correlations strength of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation temperature field data from the Wilkinson…
We revisit the alignments of the largest structures observed in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using the seven and nine-year WMAP and first-year Planck data releases. The observed alignments -- the quadrupole with the octopole and…
WMAP precision data enables accurate testing of cosmological models. We find that the emerging standard model of cosmology, a flat Lambda-dominated universe seeded by nearly scale-invariant adiabatic Gaussian fluctuations, fits the WMAP…
If the principle of statistical isotropy is valid, then the angular power spectrum (APS) of cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation is uncorrelated between different multipoles. We propose a novel technique to analyse any possible…
The success of present and future cosmological studies is tied to the ability to detect discrepancies in complex data sets within the framework of a cosmological model. Tensions caused by the presence of unknown systematic effects need to…
The recent measurements of the power spectrum of Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies are consistent with the simplest inflationary scenario and big bang nucleosynthesis constraints. However, these results rely on the assumption of a…
We present a joint cosmological analysis combining data from the Planck satellite, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, and the South Pole Telescope. We construct a unified likelihood that reproduces the measured temperature and polarisation…
We present cosmological parameter constraints based on the final nine-year WMAP data, in conjunction with additional cosmological data sets. The WMAP data alone, and in combination, continue to be remarkably well fit by a six-parameter LCDM…
We examine the level of agreement between low redshift weak lensing data and the CMB using measurements from the CFHTLenS and Planck+WMAP polarization. We perform an independent analysis of the CFHTLenS six bin tomography results of Heymans…
The two fundamental assumptions of the standard cosmological model - that the initial fluctuations are statistically isotropic and Gaussian - are rigorously tested using maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy from the…
We have updated our analysis of the 9-year WMAP data using the collection of polarization maps looking for the presence of additional evidence for a finite 'cosmic ray foreground' for the CMB. We have given special attention to high…
We quantify the level of foreground contamination in the QMAP Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data with two objectives: (a) measuring the level to which the QMAP power spectrum measurements need to be corrected for foregrounds and (b)…
Spectral distortions of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) offer the possibility of probing processes which occurred during the evolution of our Universe going back up to Z$\simeq 10^7$. Unfortunately all the attempts so far carried out…
The standard model of cosmology has provided a good phenomenological description of a wide range of observations both at astrophysical and cosmological scales for several decades. This concordance model is constructed by a universal…
The residuals of the power spectra of WMAP and Planck's cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies data are known to exhibit a few interesting anomalies at different scales with marginal statistical significance. Combining bottom-up and…
We develop a new Bayesian method for estimating white noise levels in CMB sky maps, and apply this algorithm to the 5-year WMAP data. We assume that the amplitude of the noise RMS is scaled by a constant value, alpha, relative to a…
We first discuss the sensitivity of the WMAP CMB power spectrum to systematic errors by calculating the raw CMB power spectrum from WMAP data. We find that the power spectrum is surprisingly sensitive to the WMAP radiometer beam profile…
We present a diagnostic test of possible Galactic contamination of cosmic microwave background sky maps designed to provide an independent check on the methods used to compile these maps. The method involves a non-parametric measurement of…
In this paper, we try to probe whether a clean CMB map obtained from the raw satellite data using a cleaning procedure is sufficiently clean. Specifically we study if there are any foreground residuals still present in the cleaned data…