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Improved method for detecting local discontinuities in CMB data by finite differencing

Jude Bowyer^* and Andrew H. Jaffe^†

Astrophysics Group, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College, Prince Consort Road, London, SW7 2BZ, United Kingdom

^*j.bowyer07@imperial.ac.uk
^†a.jaffe@imperial.ac.uk

Phys. Rev. D 83, 023503 – Published 6 January, 2011

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.83.023503

Abstract

An unexpected distribution of temperatures in the CMB could be a sign of new physics. In particular, the existence of cosmic defects could be indicated by temperature discontinuities via the Kaiser-Stebbins effect. In this paper, we show how performing finite differences on a CMB map, with the noise regularized in harmonic space, may expose such discontinuities, and we report the results of this process on the 7-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data.

Article Text

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