A Bayesian approach to the cosmic dipole in radio galaxy surveys: Joint analysis of NVSS & RACS

TL;DR

This paper uses a Bayesian approach to analyze radio galaxy surveys, accounting for local sources, and finds a dipole aligned with the CMB but larger in amplitude, raising questions about the universe's large-scale homogeneity.

Contribution

It introduces a Bayesian joint analysis method for NVSS and RACS surveys, explicitly modeling local sources to refine dipole measurements and assess cosmological principles.

Findings

Dipole amplitude reduced after accounting for local sources.

Support for a dipole aligned with the CMB but with larger magnitude.

Local sources contribute significantly to the observed dipole.

Abstract

We examine the sky distribution of radio galaxies in the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) and the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS). Analyses of these samples have reported tension between their inferred dipoles and the kinematic dipole of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). This represents a challenge to the traditional assumption that the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic on large scales: the cosmological principle. We find that NVSS and RACS contain local radio sources which give a non-negligible contribution to the overall dipole signal. These need to be adequately accounted for since the aim is to probe the composition of the Universe at large scales. By appropriately considering these sources, the inferred dipole amplitude in either sample is reduced. Nonetheless, we find support for a dipole aligning with that of the CMB but larger in amplitude, especially in the joint analysis. However, the 'clustering dipole' - the contribution of local sources to the net inferred dipole - appears to align with the direction of the CMB dipole, and its magnitude increases as deeper nearby sources are considered up to a comoving distance of $\approx 130$ Mpc ($h=0.7$). The significance of this observation in the context of the cosmological principle is unclear and prompts further inquiry.