Planck 2013 results. XXIII. Isotropy and statistics of the CMB

TL;DR

This paper rigorously tests the assumptions of isotropy and Gaussianity in the CMB using Planck data, confirming some anomalies and exploring their potential implications for cosmology.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of CMB isotropy and Gaussianity, confirming previously observed anomalies and examining their scale dependence and potential physical origins.

Findings

Deviations from isotropy are robust and confirmed in Planck data.

A persistent power asymmetry exists up to l=600 scales.

Some anomalies may relate to parity violation and phase correlations.

Abstract

The two fundamental assumptions of the standard cosmological model - that the initial fluctuations are statistically isotropic and Gaussian - are rigorously tested using maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy from the Planck satellite. Deviations from isotropy have been found and demonstrated to be robust against component separation algorithm, mask choice and frequency dependence. Many of these anomalies were previously observed in the WMAP data, and are now confirmed at similar levels of significance (about 3 sigma). However, we find little evidence for non-Gaussianity, with the exception of a few statistical signatures that seem to be associated with specific anomalies. In particular, we find that the quadrupole-octopole alignment is also connected to a low observed variance of the CMB signal. A power asymmetry is now found to persist to scales corresponding to about l=600, and can be described in the low-l regime by a phenomenological dipole modulation model. However, any primordial power asymmetry is strongly scale-dependent and does not extend to arbitrarily small angular scales. Finally, it is plausible that some of these features may be reflected in the angular power spectrum of the data, which shows a deficit of power on similar scales. Indeed, when the power spectra of two hemispheres defined by a preferred direction are considered separately, one shows evidence for a deficit in power, while its opposite contains oscillations between odd and even modes that may be related to the parity violation and phase correlations also detected in the data. Although these analyses represent a step forward in building an understanding of the anomalies, a satisfactory explanation based on physically motivated models is still lacking.