Related papers: Maxwell's Multipole Vectors and the CMB
We propose a novel representation of cosmic microwave anisotropy maps, where each multipole order l is represented by l unit vectors pointing in directions on the sky and an overall magnitude. These "multipole vectors and scalars" transform…
The low multipoles of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy possess some strange properties like the alignment of the quadrupole and the octopole, and the extreme planarity or the extreme sphericity of some multipoles,…
We review Maxwell's multipole vectors, and elucidate some of their mathematical properties, with emphasis on the application of this tool to the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In particular, for a completely random function on the…
We study a multipole vector-based decomposition of cosmic microwave background (CMB) data in order to search for signatures of a multiconnected topology of the universe. Using 10^6 simulated maps, we analyse the multipole vector…
[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…
Copi, Huterer, Starkman and Schwarz introduced multipole vectors in a tensor context and used them to demonstrate that the first-year WMAP quadrupole and octopole planes align at roughly the 99.9% confidence level. In the present article…
Recent observations have pointed out various anomalies in some multipoles (small $\ell $) of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In this paper, it is proved that some of these anomalies could be explained in the framework of a modified…
We investigate the Statistical Isotropy and Gaussianity of the CMB fluctuations, using a set of multipole vector functions capable of separating these two issues. In general a multipole is broken into a frame and $2\ell-3$ ordered…
We introduce new, low-$\ell$, multipole vectors for the CMB temperature fluctuations. A very strong alignment of the quadrupole and octopole vectors is observed as well as a remarkably low declination of these vectors with respect to the…
We study the alignments of the low multipoles of CMB anisotropies with specific directions in the sky (i.e. the dipole, the north Ecliptic pole, the north Galactic pole and the north Super Galactic pole). Performing $10^5$ random…
We apply the recently defined multipole vector framework to the frequency-specific first-year WMAP sky maps, estimating the low-l multipole coefficients from the high-latitude sky by means of a power equalization filter. While most previous…
Maxwell's multipoles are a natural geometric characterisation of real functions on the sphere (with fixed $\ell$). The correlations between multipoles for gaussian random functions are calculated, by mapping the spherical functions to…
Recent analyses of the WMAP data have suggested that the low-order multipoles of the CMB anisotropy distribution show cosmologically interesting and unexpected morphologies and amplitudes. In this paper, we apply a power equalization (PE)…
Recent Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data confirm the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) quadrupole anomaly. We further elaborate our previous proposal that the quadrupole power can be naturally suppressed in axis-symmetric…
A fundamental assumption in cosmology is that of statistical isotropy - that the universe, on average, looks the same in every direction in the sky. Statistical isotropy has recently been tested stringently using Cosmic Microwave Background…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) reaches homogeneity at relatively modest angular scales compared to the expectation of the standard $\Lambda$CDM model revealing an important challenge to the theoretical predictions. We analyze this…
A simple algorithm which gives the multipole vectors in terms of the roots of a polynomial is given. We find that the reported alignmet of the low l multipole vectors can be summarised as an anti-alignmet of these with the dipole direction.…
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…
Low multipole amplitudes in the Cosmic Microwave Background CMB radiation can be explained by selection rules from the underlying multiply-connected homotopy. We apply a multipole analysis to the harmonic bases and introduce point…
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…