Cosmic Microwave Background Temperature Fluctuations Research Articles

Finding origins of CMB anomalies in the inflationary quantum fluctuations

In this paper, we present compelling evidence for the parity asymmetry (a discrete symmetry separate from isotropy) in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) map, measured through two-point temperature correlations. Any asymmetry associated with discrete symmetries, such as parity, challenges our understanding of quantum physics associated with primordial physics rather than LCDM (Λ Cold-Dark-Matter) itself. We commence by conducting a comprehensive analysis of the Planck CMB, focusing on the distribution of power in low-multipoles and temperature anticorrelations at parity conjugate points in position space. We find tension with the near scale-invariant power-law power spectrum of Standard Inflation (SI), with p-values of the order 𝒪(10-4 - 10-3). Alternatively, we explore the framework of direct-sum inflation (DSI), where a quantum fluctuation arises as a direct sum of two components evolving forward and backward in time at parity conjugate points in physical space. This mechanism results in a parity-asymmetric scale-dependent power spectrum, particularly prominent at low-multipoles, without any additional free model parameters. Our findings indicate that DSI is consistent with data on parity asymmetry, the absence of power at θ > 60°, and power suppression at low-even-multipoles which are major data anomalies in the SI model. Furthermore, we discover that the parameters characterizing the hemispherical power asymmetry anomaly become statistically insignificant when the large SI quadrupole amplitude is reduced to align with the data. DSI explains this low quadrupole with a p-value of 3.5%, 39 times higher than SI. Combining statistics from parameters measuring parity and low-ℓ angular power spectrum, we find that DSI is 50-650 times more probable than SI. In summary, our investigation suggests that while CMB temperature fluctuations exhibit homogeneity and isotropy, they also display parity-asymmetric behavior consistent with predictions of DSI. This observation provides a tantalizing evidence for the quantum mechanical nature of gravity.

Betti Functionals as Probes for Cosmic Topology

The question of the global topology of the Universe (cosmic topology) is still open. In the ΛCDM concordance model, it is assumed that the space of the Universe possesses the trivial topology of R3, and thus that the Universe has an infinite volume. As an alternative, in this paper, we study one of the simplest non-trivial topologies given by a cubic 3-torus describing a universe with a finite volume. To probe cosmic topology, we analyze certain structure properties in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using Betti functionals and the Euler characteristic evaluated on excursions sets, which possess a simple geometrical interpretation. Since the CMB temperature fluctuations δT are observed on the sphere S2 surrounding the observer, there are only three Betti functionals βk(ν), k=0,1,2. Here, ν=δT/σ0 denotes the temperature threshold normalized by the standard deviation σ0 of δT. The analytic approximations of the Gaussian expectations for the Betti functionals and an exact formula for the Euler characteristic are given. It is shown that the amplitudes of β0(ν) and β1(ν) decrease with an increasing volume V=L3 of the cubic 3-torus universe. Since the computation of the βk’s from observational sky maps is hindered due to the presence of masks, we suggest a method that yields lower and upper bounds for them and apply it to four Planck 2018 sky maps. It is found that the βk’s of the Planck maps lie between those of the torus universes with side-lengths L=2.0 and L=3.0 in units of the Hubble length and above the infinite ΛCDM case. These results give a further hint that the Universe has a non-trivial topology.

BEYONDPLANCK

We present posterior sample-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) constraints fromPlanckLFI and WMAP observations as derived through global end-to-end Bayesian processing within the BEYONDPLANCKframework. We first used these samples to study correlations between CMB, foreground, and instrumental parameters. We identified a particularly strong degeneracy between CMB temperature fluctuations and free-free emission on intermediate angular scales (400 ≲ ℓ ≲ 600), mitigated through model reduction, masking, and resampling. We compared our posterior-based CMB results with previousPlanckproducts and found a generally good agreement, however, with notably higher noise due to our exclusion ofPlanckHFI data. We found a best-fit CMB dipole amplitude of 3362.7 ± 1.4 μK, which is in excellent agreement with previousPlanckresults. The quoted dipole uncertainty is derived directly from the sampled posterior distribution and does not involve any ad hoc contributions forPlanckinstrumental systematic effects. Similarly, we find a temperature quadrupole amplitude of $ \sigma^{TT}_2=229\pm97\,\muup{\rm K}^2 $ , which is in good agreement with previous results in terms of the amplitude, but the uncertainty is one order of magnitude greater than the naive diagonal Fisher uncertainty. Concurrently, we find less evidence of a possible alignment between the quadrupole and octopole than previously reported, due to a much larger scatter in the individual quadrupole coefficients that is caused both by marginalizing over a more complete set of systematic effects – as well as by requiring a more conservative analysis mask to mitigate the free-free degeneracy. For higher multipoles, we find that the angular temperature power spectrum is generally in good agreement with bothPlanckand WMAP. At the same time, we note that this is the first time that the sample-based, asymptotically exact Blackwell-Rao estimator has been successfully established for multipoles up toℓ ≤ 600. It now accounts for the majority of the cosmologically important information. Overall, this analysis demonstrates the unique capabilities of the Bayesian approach with respect to end-to-end systematic uncertainty propagation and we believe it can and should play an important role in the analysis of future CMB experiments. Cosmological parameter constraints are presented in a companion paper.

Optimal estimation of the binned mask-free power spectrum, bispectrum, and trispectrum on the full sky: Scalar edition

We derive optimal estimators for the two-, three-, and four-point correlators of statistically isotropic scalar fields defined on the sphere, such as the cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuations, allowing for arbitrary (linear) masking and inpainting schemes. In each case, we give the optimal unwindowed estimator (obtained via a maximum-likelihood prescription, with an associated Fisher deconvolution matrix), and an idealized form, and pay close attention to their efficient computation. For the trispectrum, we include both parity-even and parity-odd contributions, as allowed by symmetry. The estimators can include arbitrary weighting of the data (and remain unbiased), but are shown to be optimal in the limit of inverse-covariance weighting and Gaussian statistics. The normalization of the estimators is computed via Monte Carlo methods, with the rate-limiting steps (involving spherical harmonic transforms) scaling linearly with the number of bins. An accompanying code package, polybin, implements these estimators in python, and we demonstrate the estimators' efficacy via a suite of validation tests.

Recovering the CMB Signal with Machine Learning

The cosmic microwave background (CMB), carrying the inhomogeneous information of the very early universe, is of great significance for understanding the origin and evolution of our universe. However, observational CMB maps contain serious foreground contaminations from several sources, such as Galactic synchrotron and thermal dust emissions. Here, we build a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) to recover the tiny CMB signal from various huge foreground contaminations. Focusing on CMB temperature fluctuations, we find that the CNN model can successfully recover the CMB temperature maps with high accuracy, and that the deviation of the recovered power spectrum C ℓ is smaller than the cosmic variance at ℓ > 10. We then apply this method to the current Planck observations, and find that the recovered CMB is quite consistent with that disclosed by the Planck Collaboration, which indicates that the CNN method can provide a promising approach to the component separation of CMB observations. Furthermore, we test the CNN method with simulated CMB polarization maps based on the CMB-S4 experiment. The result shows that both the EE and BB power spectra can be recovered with high accuracy. Therefore, this method will be helpful for the detection of primordial gravitational waves in current and future CMB experiments. The CNN is designed to analyze two-dimensional images, thus this method is not only able to process full-sky maps, but also partial-sky maps. Therefore, it can also be used for other similar experiments, such as radio surveys like the Square Kilometer Array.

Most constraining cosmological neutrino mass bounds

We present here up-to-date neutrino mass limits exploiting the most recent cosmological data sets. By making use of the cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuation and polarization measurements, supernovae Ia luminosity distances, baryon acoustic oscillation observations and determinations of the growth rate parameter, we are able to set the most constraining bound to date, $\ensuremath{\sum}{m}_{\ensuremath{\nu}}<0.09\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{eV}$ at 95% C.L. This very tight limit is obtained without the assumption of any prior on the value of the Hubble constant and highly compromises the viability of the inverted mass ordering as the underlying neutrino mass pattern in nature. The results obtained here further strengthen the case for very large multitracer spectroscopic surveys as unique laboratories for cosmological relics, such as neutrinos: that would be the case of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument survey and of the Euclid mission.

Null geodesic congruences, gravitational lensing and CMB intensity profile

It is known that the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature fluctuations are modified by gravitational lensing since the angular positions of photons are altered by the metric perturbations. We reconsider this effect in the context of geodesic deviation on a perturbed Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) spacetime with scalar and tensor modes. We first give an alternative derivation of the Sachs-Wolfe effect by using the solutions of the null geodesic equation. Then, we determine the two-dimensional induced metric on the transverse cross section of the null geodesic congruence corresponding to a beam of photons after decoupling. This metric, whose variation along the congruence can be decomposed as expansion and shear, is shown to produce a nontrivial intensity profile which can be characterized by three variables analogous to the Stokes parameters of the polarization tensor.

A Monte Carlo comparison between template-based and Wiener-filter CMB dipole estimators

We review and compare two different cosmic microwave background (CMB) dipole estimators discussed in the literature and assess their performances through Monte Carlo simulations. The first method amounts to simple template regression with partial sky data, while the second method is an optimal Wiener filter (or Gibbs sampling) implementation. The main difference between the two methods is that the latter approach takes into account correlations with higher-order CMB temperature fluctuations that arise from nonorthogonal spherical harmonics on an incomplete sky, which for recent CMB data sets (such as Planck) is the dominant source of uncertainty. For an accepted sky fraction of 81% and an angular CMB power spectrum corresponding to the best-fit Planck 2018 ΛCDM model, we find that the uncertainty on the recovered dipole amplitude is about six times smaller for the Wiener filter approach than for the template approach, corresponding to 0.5 and 3 μK, respectively. Similar relative differences are found for the corresponding directional parameters and other sky fractions. We note that the Wiener filter algorithm is generally applicable to any dipole estimation problem on an incomplete sky, as long as a statistical and computationally tractable model is available for the unmasked higher-order fluctuations. The methodology described in this paper forms the numerical basis for the most recent determination of the CMB solar dipole from Planck, as summarized by Planck Collaboration Int. LVII (2020).

Searching for anisotropic cosmic birefringence with polarization data from SPTpol

We present a search for anisotropic cosmic birefringence in 500 deg$^2$ of southern sky observed at 150 GHz with the SPTpol camera on the South Pole Telescope. We reconstruct a map of cosmic polarization rotation anisotropies using higher-order correlations between the observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) $E$ and $B$ fields. We then measure the angular power spectrum of this map, which is found to be consistent with zero. The non-detection is translated into an upper limit on the amplitude of the scale-invariant cosmic rotation power spectrum, $L(L+1)C_L^{\alpha\alpha}/2\pi < 0.10 \times 10^{-4}$ rad$^2$ (0.033 deg$^2$, 95% C.L.). This upper limit can be used to place constraints on the strength of primordial magnetic fields, $B_{1 \rm Mpc} < 17 {\rm nG} $ (95% C.L.), and on the coupling constant of the Chern-Simons electromagnetic term $g_{a\gamma} < 4.0 \times 10^{-2}/H_I $ (95% C.L.), where $H_I$ is the inflationary Hubble scale. For the first time, we also cross-correlate the CMB temperature fluctuations with the reconstructed rotation angle map, a signal expected to be non-vanishing in certain theoretical scenarios, and find no detectable signal. We perform a suite of systematics and consistency checks and find no evidence for contamination.

Is there evidence for a hotter Universe?

The measurement of present-day temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), T_0 = 2.72548 pm 0.00057 K (1sigma ), made by the Far-InfraRed Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) as recalibrated by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), is one of the most precise measurements ever made in Cosmology. On the other hand, estimates of the Hubble Constant, H_0, obtained from measurements of the CMB temperature fluctuations assuming the standard varLambda CDM model exhibit a large (4.1sigma ) tension when compared with low-redshift, model-independent observations. Recently, some authors argued that a slightly change in T_0 could alleviate or solve the H_0-tension problem. Here, we investigate evidence for a hotter or colder universe by performing an independent analysis from currently available temperature-redshift T(z) measurements. Our analysis (parametric and non-parametric) shows a good agreement with the FIRAS measurement and a discrepancy of ge 1.9sigma from the T_0 values required to solve the H_0 tension. This result reinforces the idea that a solution of the H_0-tension problem in fact requires either a better understanding of the systematic errors on the H_0 measurements or new physics.

Distant foreground and the Planck-derived Hubble constant

ABSTRACT It is possible to reduce the discrepancy between the local measurement of the cosmological parameter H0 and the value derived from the Planck measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) by considering contamination of the CMB by emission from some medium around distant extragalactic sources, such as extremely cold coarse-grain dust. Though being distant, such a medium would still be in the foreground with respect to the CMB, and, as any other foreground, it would alter the CMB power spectrum. This could contribute to the dispersion of CMB temperature fluctuations. By generating a few random samples of CMB with different dispersions, we have checked that the increased dispersion leads to a smaller estimated value of H0, the rest of the cosmological model parameters remaining fixed. This might explain the reduced value of the Planck-derived parameter H0 with respect to the local measurements. The signature of the distant foreground in the CMB traced by supernovae (SNe) was previously reported by the authors of this paper – we found a correlation between the SN redshifts, zSN, and CMB temperature fluctuations at the SNe locations, TSN. Here we have used the slopes of the regression lines $T_{\rm SN}\, /\, z_{\rm SN}$ corresponding to different Planck wavebands in order to estimate the possible temperature of the distant extragalactic medium, which turns out to be very low, about 5 K. The most likely ingredient of this medium is coarse-grain (grey) dust, which is known to be almost undetectable, except for the effect of dimming remote extragalactic sources.

Exploring suppressed long-distance correlations as the cause of suppressed large-angle correlations

ABSTRACT The absence of large-angle correlations in the map of cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuations is among the well-established anomalies identified in full-sky and cut-sky maps over the past three decades. Suppressed large-angle correlations are rare statistical flukes in standard inflationary cosmological models. One natural explanation could be that the underlying primordial density perturbations lack correlations on large distance scales. To test this idea, we replace Fourier modes by a wavelet basis with compact spatial support. While the angular correlation function of perturbations can readily be suppressed, the observed monopole- and dipole-subtracted correlation function is not generally suppressed. This suggests that suppression of large-angle temperature correlations requires a mechanism that has both real-space and harmonic-space effects.

Entropy production in inflation from spectator loops

Perturbations in cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons and large scale structure of the universe are sourced primarily by the curvature perturbation which is widely believed to be produced during inflation. In this paper we present a 2-field inflationary model in which the inflaton couples bi-quadratically to a spectator field. We show that the spectator induces a rapid growth of the momentum of the curvature perturbation and the associated Gaussian van Neumann entropy during inflation such that the initial conditions at the end of inflation are substantially different from the standard ones. Consequently, one ought to reconsider the kinetic equations describing evolution of the photon, dark matter and baryonic fluids in radiation and matter eras and take account of the fact that the curvature perturbation and its canonical momentum are two {\it a priory} independent stochastic fields. We also briefly analyze possible imprints on the CMB temperature fluctuations from the more general inflationary scenario which contains light spectator fields coupled to the inflaton.

Transverse Velocities with the Moving Lens Effect.

Gravitational potentials that change in time induce fluctuations in the observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature. Cosmological structure moving transverse to our line of sight provides a specific example known as the moving lens effect. Here, we explore how the observed CMB temperature fluctuations, combined with the observed matter overdensity, can be used to infer the transverse velocity of cosmological structures on large scales. We show that near-future CMB surveys and galaxy surveys will have the statistical power to make a first detection of the moving lens effect, and we discuss applications for the reconstructed transverse velocity.

Cross-correlation of the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect and 21 cm intensity mapping with tidal reconstruction

We discuss the possibility of studying diffuse baryon distributions with kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect by correlating cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature fluctuations with density fluctuations from 21\,cm intensity mapping (IM). The biggest challenge for the cross-correlation is the loss of large-scale information in IM, due to foregrounds and the zero spacing problem of interferometers. We apply the tidal reconstruction algorithm to restore the lost large-scale modes, which increases the correlation by more than a factor of three. With the predicted foreground level, we expect a $\sim20\,\sigma$ detection of kSZ signal for $0.8\lesssim z\lesssim2.5$ with CHIME and Planck, and a $\sim40\, \sigma$ detection with HIRAX and Planck. The significance can be greatly increased with next-generation facilities of higher spatial resolutions.

Unexpected topology of the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background

We study the topology generated by the temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, as quantified by the number of components and holes, formally given by the Betti numbers, in the growing excursion sets. We compare CMB maps observed by the Planck satellite with a thousand simulated maps generated according to the ΛCDM paradigm with Gaussian distributed fluctuations. The comparison is multi-scale, being performed on a sequence of degraded maps with mean pixel separation ranging from 0.05 to 7.33°. The survey of the CMB over 𝕊2 is incomplete due to obfuscation effects by bright point sources and other extended foreground objects like our own galaxy. To deal with such situations, where analysis in the presence of “masks” is of importance, we introduce the concept of relative homology. The parametric χ2-test shows differences between observations and simulations, yielding p-values at percent to less than permil levels roughly between 2 and 7°, with the difference in the number of components and holes peaking at more than 3σ sporadically at these scales. The highest observed deviation between the observations and simulations for b0 and b1 is approximately between 3σ and 4σ at scales of 3–7°. There are reports of mildly unusual behaviour of the Euler characteristic at 3.66° in the literature, computed from independent measurements of the CMB temperature fluctuations by Planck’s predecessor, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite. The mildly anomalous behaviour of the Euler characteristic is phenomenologically related to the strongly anomalous behaviour of components and holes, or the zeroth and first Betti numbers, respectively. Further, since these topological descriptors show consistent anomalous behaviour over independent measurements of Planck and WMAP, instrumental and systematic errors may be an unlikely source. These are also the scales at which the observed maps exhibit low variance compared to the simulations, and approximately the range of scales at which the power spectrum exhibits a dip with respect to the theoretical model. Non-parametric tests show even stronger differences at almost all scales. Crucially, Gaussian simulations based on power-spectrum matching the characteristics of the observed dipped power spectrum are not able to resolve the anomaly. Understanding the origin of the anomalies in the CMB, whether cosmological in nature or arising due to late-time effects, is an extremely challenging task. Regardless, beyond the trivial possibility that this may still be a manifestation of an extreme Gaussian case, these observations, along with the super-horizon scales involved, may motivate the study of primordial non-Gaussianity. Alternative scenarios worth exploring may be models with non-trivial topology, including topological defect models.

Thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich anisotropy due to primordial black holes

We investigate the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect caused by primordial black holes (PBHs) on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature fluctuations. The gas accreting on a PBH heats up by the release of the gravitational energy. As a result, the heated gas in the vicinity of the PBH emits the UV and X-ray photons. These photons can ionize and heat the intergalactic medium (IGM) around the PBH. Assuming the simple model of these emitting photons, we compute the profiles of the IGM ionization fraction and temperature around a PBH. Using these profiles, we evaluate the Compton $y$-parameter created by the IGM gas around a PBH. Finally, we estimate the CMB temperature angular power spectrum due to the PBH SZ effect in our model. We show that the SZ temperature anisotropy due to the PBHs has the flat angular power spectrum on small scale, $l\leq2000$ and could dominate the primordial temperature spectrum on smaller scales than the Silk scale. This flat spectrum extends to the scale of the ionized region by the PBH emission. We also discuss the impact of the small-scale CMB measurement on the PBH abundance based on our results.

Reconstructing small-scale lenses from the cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuations

AbstractCosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing is a powerful probe of the matter distribution in the Universe. The standard quadratic estimator, which is typically used to measure the lensing signal, is known to be suboptimal for low-noise polarization data from next-generation experiments. In this paper, we explain why the quadratic estimator will also be suboptimal for measuring lensing on very small scales, even for measurements in temperature where this estimator typically performs well. Though maximum likelihood methods could be implemented to improve performance, we explore a much simpler solution, revisiting a previously proposed method to measure lensing that involves a direct inversion of the background gradient. An important application of this simple formalism is the measurement of cluster masses with CMB lensing. We find that directly applying a gradient inversion matched filter to simulated lensed images of the CMB can tighten constraints on cluster masses compared to the quadratic estimator. While the difference is not relevant for existing surveys, for future surveys it can translate to significant improvements in mass calibration for distant clusters, where galaxy lensing calibration is ineffective due to the lack of enough resolved background galaxies. Improvements can be as large as ${\sim } 50{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ for a cluster at z = 2 and a next-generation CMB experiment with 1 $\mu$K arcmin noise, and over an order of magnitude for lower noise levels. For future surveys, this simple matched filter or gradient inversion method approaches the performance of maximum likelihood methods, at a fraction of the computational cost.

Characterizing the epoch of reionization with the small-scale CMB: Constraints on the optical depth and duration

Patchy reionization leaves a number of imprints on the small-scale cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature fluctuations, the largest of which is the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ), the Doppler shift of CMB photons scattering off moving electrons in ionized bubbles. It has long been known that in the CMB power spectrum, this imprint of reionization is largely degenerate with the kSZ signal produced by late-time galaxies and clusters, thus limiting our ability to constrain reionization. Following Smith & Ferraro (2017), it is possible to isolate the reionization contribution in a model independent way, by looking at the large scale modulation of the small scale CMB power spectrum. In this paper we extend the formalism to use the full shape information of the small scale power spectrum (rather than just its broadband average), and argue that this is necessary to break the degeneracy between the optical depth $\tau$ and parameters setting the duration of reionization. In particular, we show that the next generation of CMB experiments could achieve up to a factor of 3 improvement on the optical depth $\tau$ and at the same time, constrain the duration of reionization to $\sim$ 25 %. This can help tighten the constrains on neutrino masses, which will be limited by our knowledge of $\tau$, and shed light on the physical processes responsible for reionization.

Explaining low ell anomalies in the CMB power spectrum with resonant superstring excitations during inflation

We explore the possibility that both the suppression of the ell = 2 multipole moment of the power spectrum of cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuations and the possible dip for ell = 10–30 can be explained as well as a possible new dip for ell approx 60 as the result of the resonant creation of sequential excitations of a fermionic (or bosonic) closed superstring that couples to the inflaton field. We consider a D,=,26 closed bosonic string with one toroidal compact dimension as an illustration of how string excitations might imprint themselves on the CMB. We analyze the existence of successive momentum states, winding states or oscillations on the string as the source of the three possible dips in the power spectrum. Although the evidence of these dips are of marginal statistical significance, this might constitute the first observational evidence of successive superstring excitations in Nature.