Anomalies of Cosmic Anisotropy from Holographic Universality of Great-Circle Variance

TL;DR

This paper investigates cosmic microwave background anomalies by comparing standard inflationary models with holographic models that predict a universal variance of primordial curvature perturbations, revealing potential deviations from standard cosmology.

Contribution

It introduces a holographic symmetry-based approach to analyze CMB anomalies, focusing on great-circle variance and intrinsic dipole estimation, highlighting deviations from standard inflationary predictions.

Findings

Nearly null angular correlation function over wide angles

Alignment of principal axes of low multipole components

High sectorality of the $\,\ell=3$ components

Abstract

We examine all-sky cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps on large angular scales to compare their consistency with two scenarios: the standard inflationary quantum picture, and a distribution constrained to have a universal variance of primordial curvature perturbations on great circles. The latter symmetry is not a property of standard quantum inflation, but may be a symmetry of holographic models with causal quantum coherence on null surfaces. Since the variation of great-circle variance is dominated by the largest angular scale modes, in the latter case the amplitude and direction of the unobserved intrinsic dipole (that is, the $\ell=1$ harmonics) can be estimated from measured $\ell = 2, 3$ harmonics by minimizing the variance of great-circle variances including only $\ell =1, 2, 3$ modes. It is found that including the estimated intrinsic dipole leads to a nearly-null angular correlation function over a wide range of angles, in agreement with a null anti-hemispherical symmetry independently motivated by holographic causal arguments, but highly anomalous in standard cosmology. Simulations are used here to show that simultaneously imposing the constraints of universal great-circle variance and the vanishing of the angular correlation function over a wide range of angles tends to require patterns that are unusual in the standard picture, such as anomalously high sectorality of the $\ell = 3$ components, and a close alignment of principal axes of $\ell=2$ and $\ell = 3$ components, that have been previously noted on the actual sky. The precision of these results appears to be primarily limited by errors introduced by models of Galactic foregrounds.