The WMAP cold spot
arXiv:0901.1986 · doi:10.1007/978-3-642-11250-8_37
Abstract
The WMAP cold spot was found by applying spherical wavelets to the first year WMAP data. An excess of kurtosis of the wavelet coefficient was observed at angular scales of around 5 degrees. This excess was shown to be inconsistent with Gaussian simulations with a p-value of around 1%. A cold spot centered at (b = -57, l = 209) was shown to be the main cause of this deviation. Several hypotheses were raised to explain the origin of the cold spot. After performing a Bayesian template fit a collapsing cosmic texture was found to be the most probable hypothesis explaining the spot. Here we review the properties of the cold spot and the possible explanations.
To appear in the "Highlights of Spanish Astrophysics V " Proceedings of the VIII Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (SEA) held in Santander, July 7-11, 2008
Cited by in corpus (6)
- New constraints on Parity Symmetry from a re-analysis of the WMAP-7 low resolution power spectra
- Searching for primordial non-Gaussianity in Planck CMB maps using a combined estimator
- A robust constraint on cosmic textures from the cosmic microwave background
- Impact of Low ell's on Large Scale Structure Anomalies
- Searching for Extremal Spots in Planck Lensing Maps
- The CMB Cold Spot under the lens II: Lensing signatures in polarization and cosmic texture footprints