First-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Parameter Estimation Methodology

By L. Verde, Hiranya V. Peiris, David N. Spergel, M. Nolta, C. Bennett, Mark Halpern, Gary F. Hinshaw, N. Jarosik, Alan Kogut, M. Limon and 10 more. 2003

486 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We describe our methodology for comparing the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and other complementary data sets to theoretical models. The unprecedented quality of the WMAP data and the tight constraints on cosmological parameters that are derived require a rigorous analysis so that the approximations made in the modeling do not lead to significant biases. We describe our use of the likelihood function to characterize the statistical properties of the microwave background sky. We outline the use of the Monte Carlo Markov Chains to explore the likelihood of the data given a model to determine the best-fit cosmological parameters and their uncertainties. We add to the WMAP data the ℓ ≳ 700 Cosmic Background Imager (CBI) and Arcminute Cosmology Bolometer Array Receiver (ACBAR) measurements of the CMB, the galaxy power spectrum at z ∼ 0 obtained from the Two-Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS), and the matter power spectrum at z ∼ 3 as measured with the Lyα forest. These last two data sets complement the CMB measurements by probing the matter power spectrum of the nearby universe. Combining CMB and 2dFGRS requires that we include in our analysis a model for galaxy bias, redshift distortions, and the nonlinear growth of structure. We show how the statistical and systematic uncertainties in the model and the data are propagated through the full analysis.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/419fe0c6da0f609c4d186283dea5510b5c1249d7

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Citations in the corpus

Large‐scale cosmic microwave background anisotropies and dark energy (2003, methodology): “In addition to the CMB likelihood code provided by WMAP (Verde et al. 2003; Hinshaw et al. 2003; Kogut et al. 2003), including the temperature-polarization crosscorrelation data, we use Cosmic Background Imager (CBI; Pearson et al. 2003) and Arcminute Cosmology Bolometer Array Receiver (ACBAR; Kuo…”
X-ray pre-ionization powered by accretion on the first black holes – I. A model for the WMAP polarization measurement (2003, methodology): “9 we show τ e and g(z) for model M3b that has a spectral index of initial density perturbations n s = 1.04 and, for comparison, model M3 that has n s = 1 normalized to the same amplitude of the power spectrum at k = 0.05 h Mpc−1 measured by WMAP (Verde et al. 2003).”
WMAP and the generalized Chaplygin gas (2003, methodology): “To derive the likelihood we adopt a version of the routine described in Verde et al. (2003), which takes into account all the relevant experimental properties (calibration, beam uncertainties, window functions, etc).”
WMAP constraints on low redshift evolution of dark energy (2004, methodology): “We compute the theoretical angular power spectrum for each model using CMBFAST.1 The comparison is carried out using the likelihood program made available by the WMAP team (Verde et al. 2003).”
The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: spherical harmonics analysis of fluctuations in the final catalogue (2004, methodology): “A fast method for mapping surfaces which has recently become fashionable in cosmology is the Markovchain Monte-Carlo technique, where an iterative walk is performed in parameter space seeking local likelihood maxima (e.g. Lewis & Bridle 2002; Verde et al. 2003; Tegmark et al. 2003b).”
Hierarchical formation of bulgeless galaxies: why outflows have low angular momentum (2010, background): “The halo was selected within a large scale, low resolution, simulation run in a concordance, flat, Λ-dominated cosmology: Ω0 = 0.24, Λ=0.76, h = 0.73, σ8 = 0.77, and Ωb = 0.042 (Spergel et al. 2003; Verde et al. 2003).”