Detection of a Supervoid Aligned with the Cold Spot of the Cosmic Microwave Background

Abstract

We use the WISE-2MASS infrared galaxy catalog matched with Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) galaxies to search for a supervoid in the direction of the Cosmic Microwave Background Cold Spot. Our imaging catalog has median redshift $z\simeq 0.14$, and we obtain photometric redshifts from PS1 optical colours to create a tomographic map of the galaxy distribution. The radial profile centred on the Cold Spot shows a large low density region, extending over 10's of degrees. Motivated by previous Cosmic Microwave Background results, we test for underdensities within two angular radii, $5^{\circ }$, and $15^{\circ }$. The counts in photometric redshift bins show significantly low densities at high detection significance, $\gtrsim 5\sigma$ and $\gtrsim 6\sigma$, respectively, for the two fiducial radii. The line-of-sight position of the deepest region of the void is $z\simeq 0.15-0.25$. Our data, combined with an earlier measurement by Granett et al. 2010, are consistent with a large $R_{\mathrm{void}}=(220\pm 50)h^{-1}Mpc$ supervoid with ${\delta }_m\simeq -0.14\pm 0.04$ centered at $z=0.22\pm 0.03$. Such a supervoid, constituting at least a $\simeq 3.3\sigma$ fluctuation in a Gaussian distribution of the $\Lambda CDM$ model, is a plausible cause for the Cold Spot.

8 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication by MNRAS

References in corpus (12)

• An Imprint of Super-Structures on the Microwave Background due to the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect
• Confronting Lemaitre-Tolman-Bondi models with Observational Cosmology
• Extragalactic Radio Sources and the WMAP Cold Spot
• Local Voids as the Origin of Large-angle Cosmic Microwave Background Anomalies I
• Local Voids as the Origin of Large-angle Cosmic Microwave Background Anomalies: The Effect of a Cosmological Constant
• The CMB cold spot: texture, cluster or void?
• Cross-correlation of 2MASS and WMAP3: Implications for the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect
• A Map of the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Signal from Luminous Red Galaxies
• CMB Lensing and the WMAP Cold Spot
• Cosmological Density Fluctuations on 100Mpc Scales and their ISW Effect
• The Cold Spot as a Large Void: Rees-Sciama effect on CMB Power Spectrum and Bispectrum
• 21-cm Lensing and the Cold Spot in the Cosmic Microwave Background

Cited by in corpus (28)

• The Pantheon+ Analysis: Cosmological Constraints
• The CosmoVerse White Paper: Addressing observational tensions in cosmology with systematics and fundamental physics
• A detection of the integrated Sachs-Wolfe imprint of cosmic superstructures using a matched-filter approach
• Euclid: Cosmological forecasts from the void size function
• Imprint of DES super-structures on the Cosmic Microwave Background
• The need for accurate redshifts in supernova cosmology
• The DES view of the Eridanus supervoid and the CMB Cold Spot
• Evidence for a high-z ISW signal from supervoids in the distribution of eBOSS quasars
• Voids and the Cosmic Web: cosmic depressions & spatial complexity
• Cosmicflows-3: Cold Spot Repeller?
• On Model Selection in Cosmology
• A common explanation of the Hubble tension and anomalous cold spots in the CMB
• Isotropy statistics of CMB hot and cold spots
• Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam excavates colossal over- and under-dense structures over 360 deg2 out to z=1
• Anisotropies in Non-Thermal Distortions of Cosmic Light from Photon-Axion Conversion
• The CMB cold spot under the lens: ruling out a supervoid interpretation
• The CMB lensing imprint of cosmic voids detected in the WISE-Pan-STARRS luminous red galaxy catalog
• The Cold Spot in the Cosmic Microwave Background: the Shadow of a Supervoid
• Testing homogeneity of the galaxy distribution in the SDSS using Renyi entropy
• Cosmic voids and induced hyperbolicity
• Cosmic voids and induced hyperbolicity. II. Sensitivity to void/wall scales
• Full sky Integrated Sachs-Wolfe maps for the MICE Grand Challenge lightcone simulation
• One of Everything: The Breakthrough Listen Exotica Catalog
• Galaxy Superclusters and Their Complexes in the Cosmic Web
• An Introduction to the Planck Mission
• Cosmology with Cosmic Voids
• Kolmogorov analysis of JWST deep survey galaxies
• Integrated Sachs-Wolfe maps from the Gower Street $w$CDM simulations