Optimal analysis of azimuthal features in the CMB

Abstract

We present algorithms for searching for azimuthally symmetric features in CMB data. Our algorithms are fully optimal for masked all-sky data with inhomogeneous noise, computationally fast, simple to implement, and make no approximations. We show how to implement the optimal analysis in both Bayesian and frequentist cases. In the Bayesian case, our algorithm for evaluating the posterior likelihood is so fast that we can do a brute-force search over parameter space, rather than using a Monte Carlo Markov chain. Our motivating example is searching for bubble collisions, a pre-inflationary signal which can be generated if multiple tunneling events occur in an eternally inflating spacetime, but our algorithms are general and should be useful in other contexts.

30 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Detection of Gravitational Lensing in the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Towards observable signatures of other bubble universes
• Eternal Inflation, Bubble Collisions, and the Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory
• Cosmic 21-cm Fluctuations as a Probe of Fundamental Physics
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Cited by in corpus (6)

• The cosmological Higgstory of the vacuum instability
• Inflation after False Vacuum Decay: Observational Prospects after Planck
• Cosmic bubble and domain wall instabilities III: The role of oscillons in three-dimensional bubble collisions
• Simulating the universe(s): from cosmic bubble collisions to cosmological observables with numerical relativity
• Observable Signatures of a Classical Transition
• Forecasting constraints from the cosmic microwave background on eternal inflation