Sky maps without anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background are a better fit to WMAP's uncalibrated time ordered data than the official sky maps

Abstract

The purpose of this reanalysis of the WMAP uncalibrated time ordered data (TOD) was two fold. The first was to reassess the reliability of the detection of the anisotropies in the official WMAP sky maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The second was to assess the performance of a proposed criterion in avoiding systematic error in detecting a signal of interest. The criterion was implemented by testing the null hypothesis that the uncalibrated TOD was consistent with no anisotropies when WMAP's hourly calibration parameters were allowed to vary. It was shown independently for all 20 WMAP channels that sky maps with no anisotropies were a better fit to the TOD than those from the official analysis. The recently launched Planck satellite should help sort out this perplexing result.

11 pages with 1 figure and 2 tables. Extensively rewritten to explain the research better

References in corpus (4)

• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Data Processing, Sky Maps, and Basic Results
• Three-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Beam Profiles, Data Processing, Radiometer Characterization and Systematic Error Limits
• High Galactic Latitude Interstellar Neutral Hydrogen Structure and Associated (WMAP) High Frequency Continuum Emission
• A robust and reliable method for detecting signals of interest in multiexponential decays

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Tests and problems of the standard model in Cosmology
• On the suspected timing error in WMAP map-making
• Gravitational hydrodynamics of large scale structure formation