Beyond the power spectrum: primordial and secondary non-Gaussianity in the microwave background
arXiv:1111.1783
Abstract
Cosmic microwave background observations are most commonly analyzed by estimating the power spectrum. In the limit where the CMB statistics are perfectly Gaussian, this extracts all the information, but the CMB also contains detectable non-Gaussian contributions from secondary, and possibly primordial, sources. We review possible sources of CMB non-Gaussianity and describe statistical techniques which are optimized for measuring them, complementing the power spectrum analysis. The machinery of -point correlation functions provides a unifying framework for optimal estimation of primordial non-Gaussian signals or gravitational lensing. We review recent results from applying these estimators to data from the WMAP satellite mission.
Invited Review, ASP conference proceedings of the "Frank N. Bash Symposium 2009: New Horizons in Astronomy"
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- Measurements of Secondary Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies with the South Pole Telescope
- The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A Measurement of the 600< ell <8000 Cosmic Microwave Background Power Spectrum at 148 GHz