The CMB cold spot under the lens: ruling out a supervoid interpretation
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies are thought to be statistically isotropic and Gaussian. However, several anomalies are observed, including the CMB Cold Spot, an unexpected cold ∼ 10° region with p-value ≲ 0.01 in standard ΛCDM. One of the proposed origins of the Cold Spot is an un...
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article (Journal) |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
June 16, 2023
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| In: |
Journal of cosmology and astroparticle physics
Year: 2023, Issue: 6, Pages: 1-25 |
| ISSN: | 1475-7516 |
| DOI: | 10.1088/1475-7516/2023/06/040 |
| Online Access: | Verlag, lizenzpflichtig, Volltext: https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2023/06/040 Verlag, lizenzpflichtig, Volltext: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1475-7516/2023/06/040 
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| Author Notes: | Stephen Owusu, Pedro da Silveira Ferreira, Alessio Notari and Miguel Quartin |
| Summary: | The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies are thought to be statistically isotropic and Gaussian. However, several anomalies are observed, including the CMB Cold Spot, an unexpected cold ∼ 10° region with p-value ≲ 0.01 in standard ΛCDM. One of the proposed origins of the Cold Spot is an unusually large void on the line of sight, that would generate a cold region through the combination of integrated Sachs-Wolfe and Rees-Sciama effects. In the past decade extensive searches were conducted in large scale structure surveys, both in optical and infrared, in the same area for z ≲ 1 and did find evidence of large voids, but of depth and size able to account for only a fraction of the anomaly. Here we analyze the lensing signal in the Planck CMB data and rule out the hypothesis that the Cold Spot could be due to a large void located anywhere between us and the surface of last scattering. In particular, computing the evidence ratio we find that a model with a large void is disfavored compared to ΛCDM, with odds 1 : 13 (1 : 20) for SMICA (NILC) maps, compared to the original odds 56 : 1 (21 : 1) using temperature data alone. |
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| Item Description: | Gesehen am 08.11.2023 |
| Physical Description: | Online Resource |
| ISSN: | 1475-7516 |
| DOI: | 10.1088/1475-7516/2023/06/040 |