Related papers: The Axis of Evil revisited

Among the biggest surprises revealed by COBE and confirmed by WMAP measurements of the temperature anisotropy of the CMB are the anomalous features in the 2-point angular correlation function on very large angular scales. In particular, the…

Using a variety of quantitative implementations of Occam's razor we examine the low quadrupole, the ``axis of evil'' effect and other detections recently made appealing to the excellent WMAP data. We find that some razors {\it fully}…

We examine previous claims for a preferred axis at $(b,l)\approx (60,-100)$ in the cosmic radiation anisotropy, by generalizing the concept of multipole planarity to any shape preference (a concept we define mathematically). Contrary to…

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…

An unexpected alignment of 2-4-8-16 cosmic microwave background spherical harmonic directions with the direction of a surprisingly large WMAP temperature minimum, a large radio galaxy void, and an unexpected alignment and handedness of…

A previous work (Monteser\'in et al. 2008) estimated the CMB variance from the three-year WMAP data, finding a lower value than expected from Gaussian simulations using the WMAP best-fit cosmological model. We repeat the analysis on the…

There is currently a debate over the existence of claimed statistical anomalies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), recently confirmed in Planck data. Recent work has focussed on methods for measuring statistical significance, on…

We revisit the anisotropic universe model previously developed by Ackerman, Carroll and Wise (ACW), and generalize both the theoretical and computational framework to include polarization and various forms of systematic effects. We apply…

We extend the previously described CMB Gibbs sampling framework to allow for exact Bayesian analysis of anisotropic universe models, and apply this method to the 5-year WMAP temperature observations. This involves adding support for…

In the standard framework of cosmology, primordial density fluctuations are assumed to have an isotropic Gaussian distribution. We search for deviations from this assumption in the WMAP data for the low $l$ modes of Cosmic Microwave…

We present a Bayesian model selection analysis of WMAP3 data using our code CosmoNest. We focus on the density perturbation spectral index $n_S$ and the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$, which define the plane of slow-roll inflationary models. We…

At the largest angular scales the presence of a number of unexpected features has been confirmed by the latest measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Among them are the anomalous alignment of the quadrupole and octopole with…

This research demonstrates that parity violation in general relativity can simultaneously explain the observed loss in power and alignment at a preferred axis ('Axis of Evil')in the low multipole moments of the WMAP data. This observational…

We provide a systematic framework for theories of multiple axions. We discover a novel type of "alignment" that renders even very complex theories analytically tractable. Theories with about 100 axions and random parameters have an…

In a very recent work [J. D. Hern\'andez Guill\'en, A. Mart\'in del Rey, A mathematical model for malware spread on WSNs with population dynamics, Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications 545(2020) 123609], a novel theoretical…

Bayesian model selection is a tool to decide whether the introduction of a new parameter is warranted by data. I argue that the usual sampling statistic significance tests for a null hypothesis can be misleading, since they do not take into…

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…

We performed a comprehensive statistical analysis using complex phases of the a_lm coefficients computed from the most recent data of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). Our aim was to confirm or constrain the presence of…

The lack of power at large angular scales in the CMB temperature anisotropy pattern is a feature known to depend on the size of the Galactic mask. Not only the large scale anisotropy power in the CMB is lower than the best-fit $\Lambda$CDM…

We consider the issue of hemispherical power asymmetry in the three-year WMAP data, adopting a previously introduced modulation framework. Computing both frequentist probabilities and Bayesian evidences, we find that the model consisiting…