Analysis of texture on cosmic background maps

Abstract

It is clear that eccentricity alone is not a good discriminator for telling appart noise maps from any ‘signal’ map. This facts makes very difficult the identification of a clear signature for the mixing of geodesics effect. However, because of the possibility of a direct determination of Ω as a consequence of mixing, new analysis techniques should be considered. One possiblity is to use the fractal dimension of hot spots as a measure of their degree of complexity. The fact that structure due to primordial fluctutions appears superposed on the anisotropies produced by the geodesic flow effect makes a strightforward interpretation of the data, in this context, more difficult. The number of spots appearing in the 53 GHz map at threshold level ν = 1 is consistent with a Harrizon-Zeldovich spectrum, while for the 90 GHz map it is only marginally consistent. Because of the high level of noise of the 31 GHz DMR channels, the montecarlo procedure shows that at the ν = 1 threshold level the number of spots in the map does not provide usefull information.

Presented by S. Torres at the Workshop on Present and Future of the Cosmic Microwave Background, Santander, June, 1993

On leave from Universidad de los Andes, and Centro International de Fisica, Bogotá, Colombia.