The two-and three-point correlation functions of the polarized five-year WMAP sky maps

Abstract

We present the two- and three-point real space correlation functions of the five-year WMAP sky maps, and compare the observed functions to simulated LCDM concordance model ensembles. In agreement with previously published results, we find that the temperature correlation functions are consistent with expectations. However, the pure polarization correlation functions are acceptable only for the 33GHz band map; the 41, 61, and 94 GHz band correlation functions all exhibit significant large-scale excess structures. Further, these excess structures very closely match the correlation functions of the two (synchrotron and dust) foreground templates used to correct the WMAP data for galactic contamination, with a cross-correlation statistically significant at the 2sigma-3sigma confidence level. The correlation is slightly stronger with respect to the thermal dust template than with the synchrotron template.

10 pages, 5 figures, published in ApJ. v2: New title, minor changes to appendix, and fixed some typos. v3: Matches version published in ApJ

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• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Data Processing, Sky Maps, and Basic Results
• Three-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Temperature Analysis
• Joint Bayesian component separation and CMB power spectrum estimation
• Component separation methods for the Planck mission
• Making sky maps from Planck data
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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Planck 2018 results. VII. Isotropy and Statistics of the CMB
• Planck 2015 results. IX. Diffuse component separation: CMB maps
• Violation of Bell inequalities from Cosmic Microwave Background data