The lack of power at large angular scales in the CMB temperature anisotropy pattern is a feature known to depend on the size of the Galactic mask. Not only the large scale anisotropy power in the CMB is lower than the best-fit $Λ$CDM model predicts, but most of the power seems to be localised close to the Galactic plane, making high-Galactic latitude regions more anomalous. We assess how likely the latter behaviour is in a $Λ$CDM model by extracting simulations from the {\it Planck} 2018 fiducial model. By comparing the former to {\it Planck} data in different Galactic masks, we reproduce the anomaly found in previous works, at a statistical significance of $\sim 3 \, σ$. This result suggests the existence of a bizzarre correlation between the particular orientation of the Galaxy and the lack of power anomaly. To test this hypothesis, we perform random rotations of the {\it Planck} 2018 data and compare these to similarly rotated $Λ$CDM realisations. We find that, among all possible rotations, the lower-tail probability of the observed high-Galactic latitude data variance is still low at the level of $2.8 \, σ$. Furthermore, the lowering trend of the variance when moving from low- to high-Galactic latitude is anomalous in the data at $\sim 3\,σ$ when comparing to $Λ$CDM rotated realisations. This shows that the lack of power at high Galactic latitude is substantially stable against the "look elsewhere" effect induced by random rotations of the Galaxy orientation. Moreover, this analysis turns out to be substantially stable if we employ, in place of generic $Λ$CDM simulations, a specific set whose variance is constrained to reproduce the observed data variance.
The influence of cosmological constant type dark energy in the early universe is investigated. This is accommodated by a new dispersion relation in de Sitter spacetime. We perform a global fitting to explore the cosmological parameters space by using the CosmoMC package with the recently released Planck TT and WMAP Polarization datasets. Using the results from global fitting, we compute a new CMB temperature-temperature spectrum. The obtained TT spectrum has lower power compared with the one based on $Λ$CDM model at large scales.
We provide evidence of the detection of a new non-Gaussian anomaly in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation which has larger statistical significance than the Cold Spot (CS) anomaly and comparable size. This temperature anomaly is aligned with a huge large quasar group (HLQG), and for this reason we call it HLQG anomaly. There are different physical phenomena by which the HLQG could have produced the observed temperature anomaly, such as for example the Sunyaev Zeldovich (SZ), the integrated Sachs Wolfe (ISW) or the Rees Sciama (RS) effect. The goal of this paper it is not to explain…
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) full-sky temperature data show a hemispherical asymmetry in power nearly aligned with the Ecliptic. In real space, this anomaly can be quantified by the temperature variance in the northern and southern Ecliptic hemispheres. In this context, the northern hemisphere displays an anomalously low variance while the southern hemisphere appears unremarkable (consistent with expectations from the best-fitting theory, $Λ$CDM). While this is a well established result in temperature, the low signal-to-noise ratio in current polarization data prevents a similar compariso…
We estimate the power spectra of CMB temperature anisotropy in localized regions on the sky using the WMAP 7-year data. Here, we report that the north hat and the south hat regions at the high Galactic latitude (|b| >= 30 deg) show anomaly in the power spectrum amplitude around the third peak, which is statistically significant up to 3 sigma. We try to figure out the cause of the observed anomaly by analyzing the low Galactic latitude (|b|< 30 deg) regions where the galaxy contamination is expected to be stronger, and regions that are weakly or strongly dominated by the WMAP instrument noise. …
We present an assessment of the CMB large scale anomalies in polarisation using the two-point correlation function as a test case. We employ the state of the art of large scale polarisation datasets: the first based on a Planck 2018 HFI 100 and 143 GHz cross-spectrum analysis, based on SRoll2 processing, and the second from a map-based approach derived through a joint treatment of Planck 2018 LFI and WMAP-9yr. We consider the well-known $S_{1/2}$ estimator, which measures the distance of the two-point correlation function from zero at angular scales larger than $60^{\circ}$, and rely on realis…
Despite the impressive success of the standard cosmological model, several anomalies defy its triumph. Among them is the so-called lensing anomaly: the Planck satellite observes stronger CMB gravitational lensing than expected. The role of neutrinos in this anomaly has been mostly overlooked, despite their key role in CMB lensing, because in the standard scenario they tend to increase the tension. Here, we show that this strongly depends on the assumed neutrino equation of state. We demonstrate that if neutrinos have yet undiscovered long-range interactions, the lensing pattern is significantl…
Asymmetric beams can create significant bias in estimates of the power spectra from CMB experiments. With the temperature power spectrum many orders of magnitude stronger than the B-mode power spectrum any systematic error that couples the two must be carefully controlled and/or removed. Here, we derive unbiased estimators for the CMB temperature and polarisation power spectra taking into account general beams and general scan strategies. A simple consequence of asymmetric beams is that, even with an ideal scan strategy where every sky pixel is seen at every orientation, there will be residual…
We investigate early dark energy models in the context of the lensing anomaly by considering two different Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) datasets: a complete Planck, and a second one primarily based on SPTPol and Planck temperature ($l<1000$). We contrast the effects of allowing the phenomenological lensing amplitude ($\Al$) to be different from unity. We find that the fraction of early dark energy, while not immediately affected by the lensing anomaly, can induce mild deviations, through correlations with the parameters $H_0$ and $S_8$. {We extend the analysis also by marginalizing the Ne…
Tensor Minkowski Functionals (TMFs) are tensorial generalizations of the usual Minkowski Functionals which are scalar quantities. We introduce them here for use in cosmological analysis, in particular to analyze CMB maps. They encapsulate information about the shapes and the orientation of structures. We focus on one of the TMFs, namely $W_2^{1,1}$, which is the generalization of the genus. The ratio of the eigenvalues of the average of $W_2^{1,1}$ over all structures, $α$, encodes the net orientation; and the average of the ratios of the eigenvalues of $W_2^{1,1}$ for each structure, $β$, enc…
We have investigated the angular correlation in the recent CMB data. In addition to the known large-angle correlation anomaly, we find the lack of correlation at small angles with high statistical significance. We have investigated various non-cosmological contamination and additionally WMAP team's simulated data. However, we have not found a definite cause. In the angular power spectrum of WMAP data, there exist anomalous odd-parity preference at low multipoles. Noting the equivalence between the power spectrum and the correlation, we have investigated the association between the lack of larg…
Beam asymmetries result in statistically-anisotropic cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps. Typically, they are studied for their effects on the CMB power spectrum, however they more closely mimic anisotropic effects such as gravitational lensing and primordial power asymmetry. We discuss tools for studying the effects of beam asymmetry on general quadratic estimators of anisotropy, analytically for full-sky observations as well as in the analysis of realistic data. We demonstrate this methodology in application to a recently-detected 9 sigma quadrupolar modulation effect in the WMAP data, sh…
The precise measurements of Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy angular power spectra made by the Planck satellite show an anomalous value for the lensing amplitude, defined by the parameter $A_{lens}$, at more than $2$ standard deviations. In this paper, after discussing the current status of the anomaly, we quantify the potential of future CMB measurements in confirming/falsifying the $A_{lens}$ tension. We find that a space-based experiment as LiteBIRD could falsify the current $A_{lens}$ tension at the level of $5$ standard deviations. Similar constraints can be achieved by a Stage-III …
The polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) provides a plethora of information about the early universe. Most notably, gravitational waves from the Inflationary epoch (the leading explanation of the origin of the universe) create a unique CMB polarization $B$-mode signal. An unambiguous detection of the inflationary $B$-mode signal would be a window into the physics of the universe as it was $10^{-36}$ seconds after the Big Bang, at energy scales many orders of magnitude larger than what the LHC can produce. However, there are several instrumental and astrophysical sources that c…
Key Laboratory of Particle Astrophysics, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院高能物理研究所粒子天体物理重点实验室）；Department of Astronomy, University of Science and Technology of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学技术大学天文系）；School of Astronomy and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学天文与空间科学学院）
Given an arbitrary function, we may construct symmetric and antisymmetric functions under a certain operation. Since statistical isotropy and homogeneity of our Universe has been a fundamental assumption of modern cosmology, we do not expect any particular symmetry or antisymmetry in our Universe. Besides fundamental properties of our Universe, we may also figure our contamination and improve the quality of the CMB data products, by matching the unusual symmetries and antisymmetries of the CMB data with known contaminantions. Noting this, we have investigated the symmetry and antisymmetry of C…
CMB full-sky temperature data show a hemispherical asymmetry in power nearly aligned with the Ecliptic. In real space, this anomaly can be quantified by the temperature variance in the northern and southern Ecliptic hemispheres, with the north displaying an anomalously low variance while the south appears consistent with expectations from the best-fitting theory, LCDM. While this is a well-established result in temperature, the low signal-to-noise ratio in current polarization data prevents a similar comparison. Even though temperature and polarization are correlated, polarization realizations…
Measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropies on large angular scales have uncovered a number of anomalous features of marginal statistical significance, such as a hemispherical power asymmetry, lack of power on large angular scales, and features in the power spectrum. Because the primary CMB temperature has been measured at the cosmic variance limit, determining if these anomalies are hints of new physics as opposed to foregrounds, systematics, or simply statistical flukes, requires new observables. In this paper, we highlight the potential contribution that f…
We describe a novel method to measure the absolute orientation of the polarization plane of the CMB with arcsecond accuracy, enabling unprecedented measurements for cosmology and fundamental physics. Existing and planned CMB polarization instruments looking for primordial B-mode signals need an independent, experimental method for systematics control on the absolute polarization orientation. The lack of such a method limits the accuracy of the detection of inflationary gravitational waves, the constraining power on the neutrino sector through measurements of gravitational lensing of the CMB, t…
In this work, predictions of the Ginzburg-Landau theory of dark energy (GLT) for CMB lensing are studied. We find that the time and scale dependence of the dark energy fluctuations in this semi-phenomenological model is favored by data in several ways. Firstly, unlike $Λ$CDM, $\ell\leq801$ and $\ell>801$ ranges of the CMB angular power spectrum are consistent in this framework. Secondly, the lensing amplitude $A_L$ is completely consistent with unity when GLT is confronted with CMB data, even without including CMB lensing data. Therefore lensing anomaly is absent in this model. Furthermore, th…
Recent analyses of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps from the WMAP satellite have uncovered evidence for a hemispherical power anomaly, i.e. a dipole modulation of the CMB power spectrum at large angular scales with an amplitude of +/-14 percent. Erickcek et al have put forward an inflationary model to explain this anomaly. Their scenario is a variation on the curvaton scenario in which the curvaton possesses a large-scale spatial gradient that modulates the amplitude of CMB fluctuations. We show that this scenario would also lead to a spatial gradient in the amplitude of perturbation…
General Relativity receives quantum corrections relevant at cosmological distance scales from the conformal scalar degrees of freedom required by the trace anomaly of the quantum stress tensor in curved space. In the theory including the trace anomaly terms, the cosmological "constant" becomes dynamical and hence potentially dependent upon both space and time. The fluctuations of these anomaly scalars may also influence the spectrum and statistics of the Cosmic Microwave Background. Under the hypothesis that scale invariance should be promoted to full conformal invariance, an hypothesis suppor…
Cosmology in Extended Parameter Space with DESI Data Release 2 Baryon Acoustic Oscillations: A 2$σ$+ Detection of Nonzero Neutrino Masses with an Update on Dynamical Dark Energy and Lensing Anomaly
Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica（中央研究院天文及天文物理研究所）
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature distribution measured by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) exhibits anomalously low correlation at large angles. Quantifying the degree to which this feature in the temperature data is in conflict with standard Lambda-CDM cosmology is somewhat ambiguous because of the a posteriori nature of the observation. One physical mechanism that has been proposed as a possible explanation for the deficit in the large-angle temperature correlations is a suppression of primordial power on ~Gpc scales. To distinguish whether the anomaly is a si…
The lack of power anomaly is an intriguing feature at the largest angular scales of the CMB anisotropy temperature pattern, whose statistical significance is not strong enough to claim any new physics beyond the standard cosmological model. We revisit the former statement by also considering polarisation data. We propose a new one-dimensional estimator which takes jointly into account the information contained in the TT, TE and EE CMB spectra. By employing this estimator on Planck 2015 low-$\ell$ data, we find that a random $Λ$CDM realisation is statistically accepted at the level of $3.68 \%$…
Quasars provide our farthest-reaching view of the Universe. The Sloan Survey now contains over 100,000 quasar candidates. A careful look at the angular distribution of quasar spectra shows a surprising "bullseye" pattern on the sky toward (RA, Dec) ~ (190°, 0°) for all wavelengths from UV through infrared. The angular distribution of the shift in the UV suggests a large peculiar velocity vp toward that direction. However, the size of the shift would indicate a vp ~0.2 c, which is two orders of magnitude larger than measures of our peculiar velocity from nearby galaxies and cosmic microwave bac…
Motivated by the SU(2)$_{\rm CMB}$ modification of the cosmological model $Λ$CDM, we consider isolated fuzzy-dark-matter lumps, made of ultralight axion particles whose masses arise due to distinct SU(2) Yang-Mills scales and the Planck mass $M_P$. In contrast to SU(2)$_{\rm CMB}$, these Yang-Mills theories are in confining phases (zero temperature) throughout most of the Universe's history and associate with the three lepton flavours of the Standard Model of particle physics. As the Universe expands, axionic fuzzy dark matter comprises a three-component fluid which undergoes certain depercola…
Examination of frequency and scale dependence of CMB hemispherical power asymmetry
Indian Institute of Technology (BHU)（印度理工学院（贝拿勒斯 Hindu 大学））；Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI)（韩国天文学与空间科学研究院）；University of Science and Technology (UST)（韩国科学技术院）
A number of studies of WMAP-7 have highlighted that the power at the low multipoles in CMB power spectrum are lower than their theoretically predicted values. Angular correlation between the orientations of these low multipoles have also been discovered. While these observations may have cosmological ramification, it is important to investigate possible observational artifacts that can mimic them. The CMB dipole which is almost 550 times higher than the quadrupole can get leaked to the higher multipoles due to the non-circular beam of the CMB experiment. In this paper an analytical method has …
Recently, the Planck 2013 results showed possible evidence for a dipolar power modulation of the CMB temperature fluctuations at low--(\ell) multipoles. This anomaly might imply certain deviations from statistical isotropy. To incorporate the Planck's data into standard cosmological model, we propose an inflation model of the very early universe in an anisotropic spacetime. A generalized Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) metric is presented in the Randers-Finsler spacetime. We obtain the primordial power spectrum of the scalar perturbation with direction dependence, such as the dipolar modulati…
Observations of the microwave background fluctuations suggest a scale-dependent amplitude asymmetry of roughly 2.5 sigma significance. Inflationary explanations for this 'anomaly' require non-Gaussian fluctuations which couple observable modes to those on much larger scales. In this Letter we describe an analysis of such scenarios which significantly extends previous treatments. We identify the non-Gaussian 'response function' which characterizes the asymmetry, and show that it is non-trivial to construct a model which yields a sufficient amplitude: many independent fine tunings are required, …
The angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies is a good probe to look into the primordial density fluctuations at large scales in the universe. Here we re-examine the angular power spectrum of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data, paying particular attention to the fine structures (oscillations) at $\ell=100 \sim 150$ reported by several authors. Using Monte-Carlo simulations, we confirm that the gap from the simple power law spectrum is a rare event, about 2.5--3$σ$, if these fine structures are generated by experimental noise and the co…
We study the Planck CMB temperature at different scales through its derivatives up to second order, which allows one to characterize the local shape and isotropy of the field. The problem of having an incomplete sky in the calculation and statistical characterization of the derivatives is addressed in the paper. The analysis confirms the existence of a low variance in the CMB at large scales, which is also noticeable in the derivatives. Moreover, deviations from the standard model in the gradient, curvature and the eccentricity tensor are studied in terms of extreme values on the data. As it i…
We use an optimal estimator to study the variance of the WMAP 9 CMB field at low resolution, in both temperature and polarization. Employing realistic Monte Carlo simulation, we find statistically significant deviations from the $Λ$CDM model in several sky cuts for the temperature field. For the considered masks in this analysis, which cover at least the 54% of the sky, the WMAP 9 CMB sky and $Λ$CDM are incompatible at $ \ge 99.94%$ C.L. at large angles ($>5^\circ$). We find instead no anomaly in polarization. As a byproduct of our analysis, we present new, optimal estimates of the WMAP 9 CMB …
A previous work (Monteserín et al. 2008) estimated the CMB variance from the three-year WMAP data, finding a lower value than expected from Gaussian simulations using the WMAP best-fit cosmological model. We repeat the analysis on the five-year WMAP data using a new estimator with lower bias and variance. Our results confirm this anomaly at higher significance, namely with a p-value of 0.31%. We perform the analysis using different exclusion masks, showing that a particular region of the sky near the Galactic plane shows a higher variance than 95.58% of the simulations whereas the rest of the …
Planck's residuals of the CMB temperature power spectrum present a curious oscillatory shape that resembles an extra smoothing effect of lensing and is the source of the lensing anomaly. The smoothing effect of lensing to the CMB temperature power spectrum is, to some extent, degenerate with oscillatory modulations of the primordial power spectrum, in particular if the frequency is close to that of the acoustic peaks. We consider the possibility that the lensing anomaly reported by the latest Planck 2018 results may be hinting at an oscillatory modulation generated by a massive scalar field du…
Ever since WMAP announced its first results, different analyses have shown that there is weak evidence for several large-scale anomalies in the CMB data. While the evidence for each anomaly appears to be weak, the fact that there are multiple seemingly unrelated anomalies makes it difficult to account for them via a single statistical fluke. So, one is led to considering a combination of these anomalies. But, if we "hand-pick" the anomalies (test statistics) to consider, we are making an \textit{a posteriori} choice. In this article, we propose two statistics that do not suffer from this probl…
The WMAP and Planck observations show that the quadrupole and octopole orientations of the CMB might align with each other. We reveal that the quadrupole--octopole alignment is a natural implication of the primordial power spectrum in an anisotropic spacetime. The primordial power spectrum is presented with a dipolar modulation. We obtain the privileged plane by employing the ``power tensor'' technique. At this plane, there is the maximum correlation between quadrupole and octopole. The probability for the alignment is much larger than what in the isotropic universe. We find that this model wo…
Revisiting the CMB homogeneity scale: low multipoles removal effect and extragalactic foreground masking
Observatório Nacional（国家天文台）；Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba (OAC), UNC（科尔多瓦天文台（科尔多瓦大学））；Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE)（国家太空活动委员会）；Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro（里约热内卢联邦农村大学物理系）；Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo（奥斯陆大学理论天体物理学研究所）
We investigate the sources of parity asymmetry in the CMB temperature maps using a pixel domain approach. We demonstrate that this anomaly is mainly associated with the presence of two pairs of high asymmetry regions. The first pair of peaks with Galactic coordinates $(l, b) = (212^\circ, -21^\circ)$ and $(32^\circ, 21^\circ)$ is associated with the Northern Galactic Spur and the direction of the dipole modulation of the power spectrum of the CMB anisotropy. The other pair ($(l, b)=(332^\circ, -8^\circ)$ and $(152^\circ, 8^\circ)$) is located within the Galactic plane (the Galactic Cold Spot a…
Single-field inflation, arguably the simplest and most compelling paradigm for the origin of our Universe, is strongly supported by the recent results of the Planck satellite and the BICEP2 experiment. The results from Planck, however, also confirm the presence of a number of anomalies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), whose origin becomes problematic in single-field inflation. Among the most prominent and well-tested of these anomalies is the Cold Spot, which constitutes the only significant deviation from gaussianity in the CMB. Planck's non-detection of primordial non-gaussianity on…
(abridged) We study the impact of the large-angle CMB polarization datasets publicly released by the WMAP and Planck satellites on the estimation of cosmological parameters of the $Λ$CDM model. To complement large-angle polarization, we consider the high-resolution CMB datasets from either WMAP or Planck, as well as CMB lensing as traced by Planck. In the case of WMAP, we compute the large-angle polarization likelihood starting over from low-resolution frequency maps and their covariance matrices, and perform our own foreground mitigation technique, which includes as a possible alternative Pla…
Since WMAP and Planck some anomalous features appeared in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) large-angle anisotropy, the so-called anomalies. One of these is the hemispherical power asymmetry, i.e. a difference in the average power on the two hemispheres centered around (l, b) = (221, -20), which shows a relatively high level of significance. Such an anomaly could be the signature of a departure from statistical isotropy on large scales. Here we investigate the physical origin of this anomaly using the Cosmological Gravitational Wave Background (CGWB) detectable by future GW detectors. Inde…
We present proof of principle for a two way interplay between physics at very early Universe and late time observations. We find a relation between primordial mechanisms responsible for large scale power suppression in the primordial power spectrum and the value of reionization optical depth $τ$. Such mechanisms can affect the estimation of $τ$. We show that using future measurements of $τ$, one can obtain constraints on the pre-inflationary dynamics, providing a new window on the physics of the very early Universe. Furthermore, the new, re-estimated $τ$ can potentially resolve moderate discre…
(Abridged) We discuss the reliability of neutrino mass constraints, either active or sterile, from the combination of WMAP 9-year or Planck CMB data with BAO measurements from BOSS DR11, galaxy shear measurements from CFHTLenS, SDSS Ly-$α$ forest constraints and galaxy cluster mass function from Chandra observations. To avoid model dependence of the constraints we perform a full likelihood analysis for all the datasets employed. As for the cluster data analysis we rely on to the most recent calibration of massive neutrino effects in the halo mass function and we explore the impact of the uncer…
The measured CMB angular distribution shows a great consistency with the LCDM model. However, isotropy violations were reported in CMB temperature maps of both WMAP and Planck data. We investigate the influence of different masks employed in the analysis of CMB angular distribution, in particular in the excess of power in the Southeastern quadrant (SEQ) and the lack of power in the Northeastern quadrant (NEQ). We compare the two-point correlation function (TPCF) computed for each quadrant of the CMB foreground-cleaned temperature maps to 1000 simulations generated assuming the LCDM best-fit po…
Spatial correlations of the cubic 3-torus topology are analysed using the Planck 2013 data. The spatial-correlation method for detecting multiply connected spaces is based on the fact that positions on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) sky, that are separated by large angular distances, can be spatially much nearer according to a hypothesized topology. The comparison of the correlations computed with and without the assumed topology can reveal whether a promising topological candidate is found. The level of the expected correlations is estimated by CMB simulations of the cubic 3-torus topo…
The plane-mirror symmetry previously noticed in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropy maps of Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe is shown to possess certain anomalous properties. The degree of the randomness determined by the Kolmogorov stochasticity parameter in the both symmetry regions appears to have identical values which, however, essentially differ from the corresponding values for other sky regions. If the mirroring were of cosmological origin, this would imply either additional randomizing properties in those directions of the Universe or their different line-…
