Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Santos, M. G.
• Heavens, A.
• Balbi, A.
• Borrill, J.
• Ferreira, P. G.
• Hanany, S.
• Jaffe, A. H.
• Lee, A. T.
• Rabii, B.
• Richards, P. L.
• Smoot, G. F.
• Stompor, R.
• Winant, C. D.
• Wu, J. H. P.

Titel

Multiple methods for estimating the bispectrum of the cosmic microwave background with application to the MAXIMA data

Ist Teil von

• Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2003-05, Vol.341 (2), p.623-643

Ort / Verlag

Oxford, UK: Blackwell Science Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2003

Quelle

Wiley Online Library Journals Frontfile Complete

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• We describe different methods for estimating the bispectrum of cosmic microwave background data. In particular, we construct a minimum-variance estimator for the flat-sky limit and compare results with previously studied frequentist methods. Application to the MAXIMA data set shows consistency with primordial Gaussianity. Weak quadratic non-Gaussianity is characterized by a tunable parameter fNL, corresponding to non-Gaussianity at a level of ∼10−5fNL (the ratio of non-Gaussian to Gaussian terms), and we find limits of fNL= 1500 ± 950 for the minimum-variance estimator and fNL= 2700 ± 1650 for the usual frequentist estimator. These are the tightest limits on primordial non-Gaussianity, which include the full effects of the radiation transfer function.