CMB statistical anisotropy, multipole vectors and the influence of the dipole

Abstract

A simple algorithm which gives the multipole vectors in terms of the roots of a polynomial is given. We find that the reported alignmet of the low l multipole vectors can be summarised as an anti-alignmet of these with the dipole direction. This anti-alignment is not only present in l=2 and 3 but also for l=5 and higher. This alignment is likely due to non-linearity in the data processing. Our results are based on the three year WMAP data, we also list corresponding results for the first year data.

arXiv commentV2: Added references and minor changes

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• Signals of Statistical Anisotropy in WMAP Foreground-Cleaned Maps
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• On the proper kinetic quadrupole CMB removal and the quadrupole anomalies
• CMB Alignment in Multi-Connected Universes
• Non-Gaussianity analysis on local morphological measures of WMAP data
• Mysteries on Universe's Largest Observable Scales
• Effect of Foregrounds on the CMBR Multipole Alignment
• Probability Density of the Multipole Vectors for a Gaussian Cosmic Microwave Background
• On Axial and Plane--Mirror Inhomogeneities in the WMAP3 Cosmic Microwave Background Maps
• Testing the statistical isotropy of large scale structure with multipole vectors
• Multipole vectors of completely random microwave skies for $l\le 50$
• Entropy methods for CMB analysis of anisotropy and non-Gaussianity
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