Paul Fey with Glenn Starkman

Statistical Isotropy of Low-D CMB

If the cosmic microwave background sky is statistically isotropic, then a two point angular correlation function of the temperature can be expressed solely as a function of the angular separation between any two points ( C(theta) ). C-sub l is the power of the l th multipole of T, i.e. the average square magnitude of the coefficients of fixed m in a spherical harmonic decomposition. With statistical isotropy, C(theta) can be expressed as a sum over the C-sub l multiplied by the Legendre polynomials of cos(theta).  However, for very low l (large theta) there are results that suggest that statistical isotropy might not be true. The goal of this project would be to examine the effects that violating statistical isotropy has on C(theta) and C-sub l .