Cosmic Microwave Background Statistics for a Direction-Dependent Primordial Power Spectrum

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dc.creatorPullen, Anthony R.
dc.creatorKamionkowski, Marc
dc.date2007-09-07
dc.date2008-01-30
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T12:13:43Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T12:13:43Z
dc.descriptionStatistical isotropy of primordial perturbations is a common assumption in cosmology, but it is an assumption that should be tested. To this end, we develop cosmic microwave background statistics for a primordial power spectrum that depends on the direction, as well as the magnitude, of the Fourier wavevector. We first consider a simple estimator that searches in a model-independent way for anisotropy in the square of the temperature (and/or polarization) fluctuation. We then construct the minimum-variance estimators for the coefficients of a spherical-harmonic expansion of the direction-dependence of the primordial power spectrum. To illustrate, we apply these statistics to an inflation model with a quadrupole dependence of the primordial power spectrum on direction and find that a power quadrupole as small as 2.0% can be detected with the Planck satellite.
dc.descriptionPublished in Phys. Rev. D; 8 pages; 1 table; Table 1 corrected; references added
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/0709.1144
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/0709.1144
dc.identifierPhys.Rev.D76:103529,2007
dc.identifierdoi:10.1103/PhysRevD.76.103529
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/210945
dc.subjectAstrophysics
dc.titleCosmic Microwave Background Statistics for a Direction-Dependent Primordial Power Spectrum
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