How Sensitive is the CMB to a Single Lens?

Abstract

We study the imprints of a single lens, that breaks statistical isotropy, on the CMB and calculate the signal to noise ratio (S/N) for its detection. We emphasize the role of non-Gaussianities induced by LCDM weak lensing in this calculation and show that typically the S/N is much smaller than expected. In particular we find that the hypothesis that a void (texture) is responsible for the WMAP cold spot can barely (cannot) be tested via weak lensing of the CMB.

Accepted for publication in JCAP, 24 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (9)

• 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
• Local Voids as the Origin of Large-angle Cosmic Microwave Background Anomalies I
• The Axis of Evil revisited
• The CMB cold spot: texture, cluster or void?
• CMB Lensing and the WMAP Cold Spot
• Giant Rings in the CMB Sky
• A Constraint On the Integrated Mass Power Spectrum out to z = 1100 from Lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Detecting the Cold Spot as a Void with the Non-Diagonal Two-Point Function

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Non-Gaussianities in the Cosmological Perturbation Spectrum due to Primordial Anisotropy II
• 21-cm Lensing and the Cold Spot in the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Galaxy-cluster masses via 21st-century measurements of lensing of 21-cm fluctuations
• CMB Lensing and Giant Rings
• Higher-Order Gravitational Lensing Reconstruction using Feynman Diagrams
• Using CMB polarization to constrain the anomalous nature of the Cold Spot with an incomplete sky-coverage
• Searching for Stringy Topologies in the Cosmic Microwave Background