Bibcode
Aliaga, A. M.; Rubiño-Martín, J. A.; Martínez-González, E.; Barreiro, R. B.; Sanz, J. L.
Referencia bibliográfica
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 356, Issue 4, pp. 1559-1570.
Fecha de publicación:
2
2005
Número de citas
7
Número de citas referidas
7
Descripción
We adapt the smooth tests of goodness-of-fit developed by Rayner and
Best to the study of the non-Gaussianity of interferometric observations
of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The interferometric
measurements (visibilities) are transformed into signal-to-noise ratio
eigenmodes, and then the method is applied directly in Fourier space.
This transformation allows us to perform the analysis in different
subsets of eigenmodes according to their signal-to-noise ratio level.
The method can also deal with non-uniform or incomplete coverage of the
UV plane. We explore here two possibilities: we analyse either the real
and imaginary parts of the complex visibilities (Gaussianly distributed
under the Gaussianity hypothesis) or their phases (uniformly distributed
under the Gaussianity hypothesis). The power of the method in
discriminating between Gaussian and non-Gaussian distributions is
studied by using several kinds of non-Gaussian simulations. On the one
hand, we introduce a certain degree of non-Gaussianity directly into the
Fourier space using the Edgeworth expansion, and afterwards the desired
correlation is introduced. On the other hand, we consider
interferometric observations of a map with topological defects (cosmic
strings). To these previous non-Gaussian simulations we add different
noise levels and quantify the required signal-to-noise ratio necessary
to achieve a detection of these non-Gaussian features. Finally, we have
also studied the ability of the method to constrain the so-called
non-linear coupling constant fNL using χ2
simulations. The whole method is illustrated here by application to
simulated data from the Very Small Array interferometer.