Giant Rings in the CMB Sky

Abstract

We find a unique direction in the CMB sky around which giant rings have an anomalous mean temperature profile. This direction is in very close alignment with the afore measured anomalously large bulk flow direction. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we estimate the significance of the giant rings at the $3\sigma$ level and the alignment with the bulk flow at $2.5\sigma$. We argue that a cosmic defect seeded by a pre-inflationary particle could explain the giant rings, the large bulk flow and their alignment.

6 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (6)

• Hemispherical power asymmetry in the three-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe sky maps
• The Uncorrelated Universe: Statistical Anisotropy and the Vanishing Angular Correlation Function in WMAP Years 1-3
• The non-Gaussian Cold Spot in the 3-year WMAP data
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Cited by in corpus (3)

• The Cosmic Microwave Background in an Inhomogeneous Universe - why void models of dark energy are only weakly constrained by the CMB
• A search for concentric circles in the 7-year WMAP temperature sky maps
• Scalar cosmological perturbations from inflationary black holes