Quarta-feira, Julho 13, 2005
Is the Universe odd? Kate Land and João Magueijo - Theoretical Physics Group, Imperial College, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2BZ, UK (July 12 2005)
Is the Universe odd?
Kate Land and João Magueijo
Theoretical Physics Group, Imperial College, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2BZ, UK
(Dated: July 12, 2005)
We investigate the point-parity and mirror-parity handedness of the large angle anisotropy in the
cosmic microwave background (CMB). In particular we consider whether the observed low CMB
quadrupole could more generally signal odd point-parity, i.e. suppression of even multipoles. Even
though this feature is “visually” present in most renditions of the WMAP dataset we find that it
never supports parity preference beyond the meagre 95% confidence level. This is fortunate as point
parity handedness implies almost certainly a high level of galactic contamination. Mirror reflection
parity, on the contrary, is related to the emergence of a preferred axis, defining the symmetry plane.
We use this technique to make contact with recent claims for an anisotropic Universe, showing that
the detected preferred axis is associated with positive (even) mirror parity. This feature may be an
important clue in identifying the culprit for this unexpected signal.
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http://www.arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0507289
arXiv:astro-ph/0507289 v1 12 Jul 2005
