Wednesday, July 24, 2013

1307.6069 (Samuel Flender et al.)

The small scale power asymmetry in the cosmic microwave background    [PDF]

Samuel Flender, Shaun Hotchkiss
We investigate the hemispherical power asymmetry in the cosmic microwave background on small angular scales. We find an anomalously high asymmetry in the multipole range l=601-2048, with a naive statistical significance of 6.5 sigma. However, we show that this extreme anomaly is simply a coincidence of three other effects, relativistic power modulation, edge effects from the mask applied, and inter-scale correlations. After correcting for all of these effects, the significance level drops to ~1 sigma, i.e., there is no anomalous intrinsic asymmetry in the small angular scales. Using this null result, we derive a constraint on a potential dipolar modulation amplitude, A(k)<0.0045 on the ~10 Mpc-scale, at 95% C.L. This new constraint must be satisfied by any theoretical model attempting to explain the hemispherical asymmetry at large angular scales.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.6069

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