Bias in low-multipole cosmic microwave background reconstructions

Details Bias in low-multipole cosmic microwave background reconstructions Bias in low-multipole cosmic microwave background reconstructions

Nov 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011mnras.418..505c&link_type=abstract

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 418, Issue 1, pp. 505-515.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Cosmic Background Radiation, Large-Scale Structure Of Universe

Scientific paper

The large-angle, low-multipole cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides a unique view of the largest angular scales in the Universe. Study of these scales is hampered by the facts that we have only one Universe to observe, only a few independent samples of the underlying statistical distribution of these modes, and an incomplete sky to observe due to the interposing Galaxy. Techniques for reconstructing a full sky from partial-sky data are well known and have been applied to the large angular scales. In this work, we critically study the reconstruction process and show that, in practice, the reconstruction is biased due to leakage of information from the region obscured by foregrounds to the region used for the reconstruction. We conclude that, despite being suboptimal in a technical sense, using the unobscured region without reconstructing is the most robust measure of the true CMB sky. We also show that for noise-free data reconstructing using the usual optimal, unbiased estimator may be employed without smoothing, thus avoiding the leakage problem. Unfortunately, directly applying this to real data with noise and residual, unmasked foregrounds yields highly biased reconstructions requiring further care to apply this method successfully to the real-world CMB.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Bias in low-multipole cosmic microwave background reconstructions does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Bias in low-multipole cosmic microwave background reconstructions, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Bias in low-multipole cosmic microwave background reconstructions will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-745113