Higher Criticism Statistic: Detecting and Identifying Non-Gaussianity in the WMAP First Year Data

Simple item page
dc.creatorCayon, L.
dc.creatorJin, J.
dc.creatorTreaster, A.
dc.date2005-07-11
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T11:24:34Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T11:24:34Z
dc.descriptionHigher Criticism is a recently developed statistic for non-Gaussian detection, proposed in Donoho & Jin 2004. We find that Higher Criticism is useful for two purposes. First, Higher Criticism has competitive detection power, and non-Gaussianity is detected at the level 99% in the first year WMAP data. We find that the Higher Criticism value of WMAP is outside the 99% confidence region at a wavelet scale of 5 degrees (99.46% of Higher Criticism values based on simulated maps are below the values for WMAP). Second, Higher Criticism offers a way to locate a small portion of data that accounts for the non-Gaussianity. Using Higher Criticism, we have successfully identified a ring of pixels centered at (l\approx 209 deg, b\approx -57 deg), which seems to account for the observed detection of non-Gaussianity at the wavelet scale of 5 degrees. Note that the detection is achieved in wavelet space first. Second, it is always possible that a fraction of pixels within the ring might deviate from Gaussianity even if they do not appear to be above the 99% confidence level in wavelet space. The location of the ring coincides with the cold spot detected in Vielva et al. 2004 and Cruz et al. 2005.
dc.descriptionsubmitted to MNRAS
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0507246
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0507246
dc.identifierMon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc.362:826-832,2005
dc.identifierdoi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2005.09277.x
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/195238
dc.subjectAstrophysics
dc.titleHigher Criticism Statistic: Detecting and Identifying Non-Gaussianity in the WMAP First Year Data
dc.typetext

Files

Collections

arXiv