Geometrical estimators as a test of Gaussianity in the CMB

Details Geometrical estimators as a test of Gaussianity in the CMB Geometrical estimators as a test of Gaussianity in the CMB

2000-09-22

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0009365v1

Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc.322:411,2001

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

9 pages, 6 postscript figures, submitted to MNRAS

Scientific paper

10.1046/j.1365-8711.2001.04139.x

We investigate the power of geometrical estimators on detecting non-Gaussianity in the cosmic microwave background. In particular the number, eccentricity and Gaussian curvature of excursion sets above (and below) a threshold are studied. We compare their different performance when applied to non-Gaussian simulated maps of small patches of the sky, which take into account the angular resolution and instrumental noise of the Planck satellite. These non-Gaussian simulations are obtained as perturbations of a Gaussian field in two different ways which introduce a small level of skewness or kurtosis in the distribution. A comparison with a classical estimator, the genus, is also shown. We find that the Gaussian curvature is the best of our estimators in all the considered cases. Therefore we propose the use of this quantity as a particularly useful test to look for non-Gaussianity in the CMB.

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