Probing the Universe's Tilt with the Cosmic Infrared Background Dipole

Abstract

Conventional interpretation of the observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) dipole is that all of it is produced by local peculiar motions. Alternative explanations requiring part of the dipole to be primordial have received support from measurements of large-scale bulk flows. A test of the two hypothesis is whether other cosmic dipoles produced by collapsed structures later than last scattering coincide with the CMB dipole. One background is the cosmic infrared background (CIB) whose absolute spectrum was measured to ~30% by the COBE satellite. Over the 100 to 500 μm wavelength range its spectral energy distribution can provide a probe of its alignment with CMB. This is tested with the COBE FIRAS dataset which is available for such a measurement because of its low noise and frequency resolution important for Galaxy subtraction. Although the FIRAS instrument noise is in principle low enough to determine the CIB dipole, the Galactic foreground is sufficiently close spectrally to keep the CIB dipole hidden. A similar analysis is performed with DIRBE, which - because of the limited frequency coverage - provides a poorer a dataset. We discuss strategies for measuring the CIB dipole with future instruments to probe the tilt and apply it to the Planck, Herschel and the proposed Pixie missions. We demonstrate that a future FIRAS-like instrument with instrument noise a factor of ~10 lower than FIRAS would make a statistically significant measurement of the CIB dipole. We find that the Planck and Herschel data sets will not allow a robust CIB dipole measurement. The Pixie instrument promises a determination of the CIB dipole and its alignment with either the CMB dipole or the dipole galaxy acceleration vector.

arXiv comment9 pages 9 figures

References in corpus (25)

• Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Data Processing, Sky Maps, and Basic Results
• The Cosmic Microwave Background Spectrum from the Full COBE/FIRAS Data Set
• 4-Year COBE DMR Cosmic Microwave Background Observations: Maps and Basic Results
• The Temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• The Spectrum of the Extragalactic Far Infrared Background from the COBE Firas Observations
• The COBE Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment Search for the Cosmic Infrared Background: I. Limits and Detections
• The density and peculiar velocity fields of nearby galaxies
• The COBE Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment Search for the Cosmic Infrared Background: II. Model of the Interplanetary Dust Cloud
• Dipole Anisotropy in the COBE DMR First-Year Sky Maps
• A measurement of large-scale peculiar velocities of clusters of galaxies: results and cosmological implications
• A new measurement of the bulk flow of X-ray luminous clusters of galaxies
• Over half of the far-infrared background light comes from galaxies at z >= 1.2
• The Dipole Anisotropy of the 2 Micron All-Sky Redshift Survey
• Cosmic Infrared Background and Early Galaxy Evolution
• A measurement of large-scale peculiar velocities of clusters of galaxies: technical details
• Clustering of the Diffuse Infrared Light from the COBE DIRBE maps. III. Power spectrum analysis and excess isotropic component of fluctuations
• The 2-10 keV XRB dipole and its cosmological implications
• Measuring cosmological bulk flows via the kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect in the upcoming cosmic microwave background maps
• The Spectrum of the CMB Anisotropy from the Combined COBE FIRAS and DMR Observations
• Microwave background anisotropy in low-${\Omega }_0$ inflationary models and the scale of homogeneity in the Universe
• A dipole anisotropy of galaxy distribution: Does the CMB rest-frame exist in the local universe?
• The Large-Scale Structure of the X-ray Background and its Cosmological Implications
• Cosmic Background dipole measurements with Planck-High Frequency Instrument
• The error budget of the Dark Flow measurement

Cited by in corpus (13)

• The Primordial Inflation Explorer (PIXIE): A Nulling Polarimeter for Cosmic Microwave Background Observations
• ARCADE 2 Measurement of the Extra-Galactic Sky Temperature at 3-90 GHz
• The WSRT ZoA Perseus-Pisces Filament wide-field HI imaging survey I. HI catalogue and atlas
• Exploring Cosmic Origins with CORE: Extragalactic sources in Cosmic Microwave Background maps
• Measuring our Peculiar Velocity by "Pre-deboosting" the CMB
• Propagation of extragalactic photons at ultra-high energy with the EleCa code
• Exploring cosmic origins with CORE: effects of observer peculiar motion
• Interpreting the CMB aberration and Doppler measurements: boost or intrinsic dipole?
• Probing the rest-frame of the Universe with near-IR cosmic infrared background
• Multi-fluid cosmology: An illustration of fundamental principles
• Modified dispersion relations and a potential explanation of the EDGES anomaly
• Implications of Pulsar Timing Array Results for High Frequency Gravitational Waves
• Galaxy number-count dipole and superhorizon fluctuations