Large scale directional anomalies in the WMAP 5yr ILC map

Abstract

We study the alignments of the low multipoles of CMB anisotropies with specific directions in the sky (i.e. the dipole, the north Ecliptic pole, the north Galactic pole and the north Super Galactic pole). Performing $10^5$ random extractions we have found that: 1) separately quadrupole and octupole are mildly orthogonal to the dipole but when they are considered together, in analogy to \cite{Copi2006}, we find an unlikely orthogonality at the level of 0.8% C.L.; 2) the multipole vectors associated to $\ell =4$ are unlikely aligned with the dipole at $99.1$ C.L.; 3) the multipole vectors associated to $\ell =5$ are mildly orthogonal to the dipole but when we consider only maps that show exactly the same correlation among the multipoles as in the observed WMAP 5yr ILC, these multipole vectors are unlikely orthogonal to the dipole at $99.7$ C.L..

12 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in JCAP. Few references added and some typos corrected

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