Related papers: A Preferred-Direction Statistic for Sky Maps
To minimize instrumentally induced systematic errors, cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy experiments measure temperature differences across the sky using paires of horn antennas, temperature map is recovered from temperature…
The mass density field as extracted from peculiar velocities in our cosmological neighborhood is mapped back in time to the CMB in two ways. First, the density power spectrum ($P_k$) is translated into a temperature angular power spectrum…
The standard method for observationally confirming the existence of a predicted finite topology of the universe involves searching for the repetition of the same finite or extended source in different directions. However, serious problems…
Non-Gaussian distributions of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies have been proposed to reconcile the discrepancies between different experiments at half-degree scales (Coulson et al. 1994). Each experiment probes a different…
The detection of point-sources in microwave maps is a critical step in the analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data. If not properly removed, these sources have adverse effects on the estimation of the power-spectrum and/or…
In order to better analyse the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which is dominated by emission from our Galaxy, we need tools that can detect residual foregrounds in cleaned CMB maps. Galactic foregrounds introduce…
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…
Several unexpected features have been observed in the microwave sky at large angular scales, both by WMAP an by Planck. Among those features is a lack of both variance and correlation on the largest angular scales, alignment of the lowest…
The {\it COBE} DMR sky maps contain low-level correlated noise. We obtain estimates of the amplitude and pattern of the correlated noise from three techniques: angular averages of the covariance matrix, Monte Carlo simulations of two-point…
A new statistic is briefly reviewed, designed to detect isolated coherent step-like discontinuities produced by cosmic strings present at late times. As a background I superpose a scale invariant Gaussian random field which could have been…
We study the statistical properties of spherical harmonic modes of temperature maps of the cosmic microwave background. Unlike other studies, which focus mainly on properties of the amplitudes of these modes, we look instead at their…
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…
In experimental microwave maps, point-sources can strongly affect the estimation of the power-spectrum and/or the test of Gaussianity of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) component. As a consequence, their removal from the sky maps…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies are a powerful probe of the early universe, and have largely contributed to establishing the current standard cosmological model. To extract the information encoded in those tiny…
Observational evidence for the presence of a preferred scale around 100 Mpc in the distribution of high-density regions in the Universe is summarised. Toy models with various degrees of regularity are analysed to understand better the…
The Cosmic Radio Dipole is of fundamental interest to cosmology. Recent studies revealed open questions about the nature of the observed Cosmic Radio Dipole. We use simulated source count maps to test a linear and a quadratic estimator for…
The angular two-point correlation function of the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), as inferred from nearly all-sky maps, is very close to zero on large angular scales. A statistic invented to quantify this feature,…
In the 1998-99 flight, BOOMERanG has produced maps of $\sim 4 %$ of the sky at high Galactic latitudes, at frequencies of 90, 150, 240 and 410 GHz, with resolution $\simgt 10'$. The faint structure of the Cosmic Microwave Background at…
A new method for estimating the angular power spectrum C_l from cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps is presented, which has the following desirable properties: (1) It is unbeatable in the sense that no other method can measure C_l with…
We use simulated maps of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy to quantify the ability of different statistical tests to discriminate between Gaussian and non-Gaussian models. Despite the central limit theorem on large angular scales,…