Probing the Cosmological Initial Conditions Using the CMB

Finally, using our estimator we found (Yadav and Wandelt 2008) evidence for primordial non-Gaussianity of the local type (fNL) in the temperature anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background. Analyzing the bispectrum of the WMAP 3-year data up to lmax=750 we find 27< fNL<147 (95% CL). This amounts to a rejection of fNL=0 at 2.8sigma, disfavoring canonical single field slow-roll inflation. The signal is robust to variations in lmax , frequency, and masks. No known foreground, instrument systematic, or secondary anisotropy explains it. We explore the impact of several analysis choices on the quoted significance and find 2.5sigma to be conservative.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Astronomy

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Yadav, Amit P.S.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Benjamin Wandelt

• Physics, Astronomy and Astrophysics

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3337967

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/85189