Local properties of WMAP Cold Spot

Abstract

We investigate the local properties of WMAP Cold Spot (CS) by defining the local statistics: mean temperature, variance, skewness and kurtosis. We find that, compared with the \emph{coldest spots} in random Gaussian simulations, WMAP CS deviates from Gaussianity at $\sim 99$ significant level. In the meanwhile, when compared with the spots at the same position in the simulated maps, the values of local variance and skewness around CS are all systematically larger in the scale of $R>5^{\circ }$, which implies that WMAP CS is a large-scale non-Gaussian structure, rather than a combination of some small structures. This is consistent with the finding that the non-Gaussianity of CS is totally encoded in the WMAP low multipoles. Furthermore, we find that the cosmic texture can excellently explain all the anomalies in these statistics.

10 pages, 16 figures, 3 tables, version to appear in MNRAS

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• Planck 2015 results. XVI. Isotropy and statistics of the CMB
• Power asymmetry in WMAP and Planck temperature sky maps as measured by a local variance estimator
• Evidence against a supervoid causing the CMB Cold Spot
• Cosmology Intertwined: A Review of the Particle Physics, Astrophysics, and Cosmology Associated with the Cosmological Tensions and Anomalies
• To the center of cold spot with Planck
• Preferred axis of CMB parity asymmetry in the masked maps
• The inflationary origin of the Cold Spot anomaly
• Probing CMB Cold Spot through Local Minkowski Functionals
• Testing statistical Isotropy in Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization maps
• Local properties of the large-scale peaks of the CMB temperature
• Mapping possible non-Gaussianity in the Planck maps
• Excessive shift of the CMB acoustic peaks of the Cold Spot area