2003/02/28 by Max Tegmark, A. de Oliveira‐Costa, Angelica de Oliveira-Costa +2 · 25 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.68.123523
published as Phys.Rev.D68:123523,2003 · Replaced to match accepted version. Added grids, refs, method details. The low-res images don't do justice to the WMAP data; high-res version of paper available at http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/wmap.html with cleaned map fits files
arxiv created 2003/07/26 · openalex publication_date 2003/12/29 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We perform an independent foreground analysis of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) maps to produce a cleaned cosmic microwave background (CMB) map (available online) useful for cross-correlation with, e.g., galaxy and x-ray maps. We use a variant of the Tegmark-Efstathiou technique that assumes that the CMB has a blackbody spectrum, but is otherwise completely blind, making no assumptions about the CMB power spectrum, the foregrounds, WMAP detector noise or external templates. Compared with the foreground-cleaned internal linear combination map produced by the WMAP team, our map has the advantage of containing less non-CMB power (from foregrounds and detector noise) outside the Galactic plane. The difference is most important on the angular scale of the first acoustic peak and below, since our cleaned map is at the highest (12.6^\ensuremath') rather than lowest (49.2^\ensuremath') WMAP resolution. We also produce a Wiener filtered CMB map, representing our best guess as to what the CMB sky actually looks like, as well as CMB-free maps at the five WMAP frequencies useful for foreground studies. We argue that our CMB map is clean enough that the lowest multipoles can be measured without any galaxy cut, and obtain a quadrupole value that is slightly less low than that from the cut-sky WMAP team analysis. This can be understood from a map of the CMB quadrupole, which shows much of its power falling within the Galaxy cut region, seemingly coincidentally. Intriguingly, both the quadrupole and the octopole are seen to have power suppressed along a particular spatial axis, which lines up between the two, roughly towards (l,b)\ensuremath∼(\ensuremath-110\ifmmode^∘\else\textdegree\fi,60\ifmmode^∘\else\textdegree\fi) in Virgo.