Related papers: On the Non-Gaussianity Observed in the COBE-DMR Sk…

Two recent papers have claimed detection of non-Gaussian features in the COBE DMR sky maps of the cosmic microwave background. We confirm these results, but argue that Gaussianity is still not convincingly ruled out. Since a score of…

We introduce and study the distribution of an estimator for the normalized bispectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy. We use it to construct a goodness of fit statistic to test the coadded 53 and 90 GHz COBE-DMR 4 year…

The COBE-DMR 4-year maps displayed a strong non-Gaussian signal in the ``inter-scale'' components of the bispectrum: their observed values did not display the scatter expected from Gaussian maps. We re-examine this and other suggested…

We extend a previous bispectrum analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature anisotropy, allowing for the presence of correlations between different angular scales. We find a strong non-Gaussian signal in the ``inter-scale''…

We extend a previous bispectrum analysis of the COBE-DMR 4 year maps, allowing for the presence of correlations between all possible angular scales. We find that the non-Gaussian signal found earlier for bispectrum components including…

We measure the angular bispectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation anisotropy from the COBE Differential Microwave Radiometer (DMR) four-year sky maps. The angular bispectrum is the harmonic transform of the three-point…

We search the high-latitude portion of the COBE Differential Microwave Radiometers (DMR) 4-year sky maps for evidence of a non-Gaussian temperature distribution in the cosmic microwave background. The genus, 3-point correlation function,…

We review our recent claim that there is evidence of non-Gaussianity in the 4 Year COBE DMR data. We present some new results concerning the effect of the galactic cut upon the non-Gaussian signal. These findings imply a localization of the…

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,…

We propose an estimator for the trispectrum of a scalar random field on a sphere, discuss its geometrical and statistical properties, and outline its implementation. By estimating the trispectrum of the 4 year COBE-DMR data (in HEALPix…

We investigate the detection of non-Gaussianity in the 4-year COBE data reported by Pando, Valls-Gabaud & Fang (1998), using a technique based on the discrete wavelet transform. Their analysis was performed on the two DMR faces centred on…

We use the two-point correlation function of the extrema points (peaks and valleys) in the COBE Differential Microwave Radiometers (DMR) 2-year sky maps as a test for non-Gaussian temperature distribution in the cosmic microwave background…

We present an analysis of the Gaussianity of the 4-year COBE-DMR data (in HEALPix pixelisation) based on spherical wavelets. The skewness, kurtosis and scale-scale correlation spectra are computed from the detail wavelet coefficients at…

COBE has provided us with a whole-sky map of the CBR anisotropies. However, even if the noise level is negligible when the four year COBE data are available, the cosmic variance will prevent us from obtaining information about the Gaussian…

We investigate the Gaussianity of the 4-year COBE-DMR data (in HEALPix pixelisation) using an analysis based on spherical Haar wavelets. We use all the pixels lying outside the Galactic cut and compute the skewness, kurtosis and scale-scale…

We present theoretical and observational studies of non-Gaussian fluctuations in CMB, by using the angular bispectrum and trispectrum. We predict the primary angular bispectrum from inflation, and forecast how well we can measure the…

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…

We limit the possible contributions from non-cosmological sources to the COBE-DMR four-year sky maps. The DMR data are cross-correlated with maps of rich clusters, extragalactic IRAS sources, HEAO-1 A-2 X-ray emission and 5 GHz radio…

I review our recent claim that there is evidence of non-Gaussianity in the 4 Year COBE DMR data. I describe the statistic we apply, the result we obtain and make a detailed list of the systematics we have analysed. I finish with a…

The cosmic microwave background radiation provides unique constraints on cosmological models. In this Letter we present a summary of the spatial properties of the cosmic microwave background radiation based on the full 4 years of COBE DMR…