Large Scale Anomalies of the Cosmic Microwave Background with Planck

Anne Mette Frejsel

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the large scale anomalies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and their possible origins. The investigations consist of two main parts. The first part is on statistical tests of the CMB, and the consistency of both maps and power spectrum. We find that the Planck data is very consistent, while the WMAP 9 year release appears more contaminated by non-CMB residuals than the 7 year release. The second part is concerned with the anomalies of the CMB from two approaches. One is based on an extended inflationary model as the origin of one specific large scale anomaly, namely point-parity asymmetry. Here we find that a modified curvaton model can reproduce an asymmetric behavior of the power spectrum at lowmultipoles. The other approach is to uncoverwhether some of the large scale anomalies could have a common origin in residual contamination from the Galactic radio loops. Here we find evidence that the Planck CMB maps contain residual radiation in the loop areas, which can be linked to some of the large scale CMB anomalies: the point-parity asymmetry, the alignment of quadrupole and octupole and the dipolemodulation.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
ForlagThe Niels Bohr Institute, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen
Antal sider128
StatusUdgivet - 2015

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