BOOMERanG constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity from analytical Minkowski functionals

• Published in: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Main Authors: Natoli, P., Bock, J. J., Lange, A. E.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Royal Astronomical Society 2010
• Subjects: methods: analytical; methods: statistical; early Universe; cosmic background radiation; cosmology: observations; Canada; Antartide
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.17228.x

We use Minkowski functionals (MFs) to constrain a primordial non-Gaussian contribution to the cosmic microwave background intensity field as observed in the 150- and 145-GHz BOOMERanG maps from the 1998 and 2003 flights, respectively, performing for the first time a joint analysis of the two data sets. A perturbative expansion of the MF formulae in the limit of a weakly non-Gaussian field yields analytical formulae, derived by Hikage et al., which can be used to constrain the coupling parameter f_(NL) without the need for non-Gaussian simulations. We find −770 < f_(NL) < 500 at 95 per cent CL, significantly improving the previous constraints by De Troia et al. on the BOOMERanG 2003 data set. These are the best f_(NL) limits to date for suborbital probes. © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 RAS. Accepted 2010 June 21. Received 2010 May 18; in original form 2009 June 2. Published: 19 October 2010. The BOOMERanG team gratefully acknowledges support from the CIAR, CSA and NSERC in Canada; Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, University La Sapienza and Programma Nazionale Ricerche in Antartide in Italy; PPARC and the Leverhulme Trust in the UK and NASA (awards NAG5-9251 and NAG5-12723) and NSF (awards OPP-9980654 and OPP-0407592) in the USA. Additional support for detector development was provided by CIT and JPL. Field, logistical and flight support were supplied by USAP and NSBF. This research used resources at NERSC, supported by the DOE under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098, and CASPUR (Rome, Italy; special thanks are due to M. Botti and F. Massaioli). We also acknowledge partial support from ASI Contract I/016/07/0 'COFIS' and ASI Contract Planck LFI activity of Phase E2. Some of the results in this paper have been derived using the HEALPIX package (Górski et al. 2005). CH acknowledges support from the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council grant number PP/C501692/1 and a JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) fellowship. We thank an anonymous referee for useful suggestions. ...