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Extragalactic Radio Sources
Extragalactic Radio Sources
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Extragalactic Radio Sources and the WMAP Cold spot
Lawrence Rudnick
1
, Shea Brown
2
, Liliya R. Williams
3
Department of Astronomy, University of Minnesota
116 Church St. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455
ABSTRACT
We detect a dip of 20-45% in the surface brightness and number counts of
NVSS sources smoothed to a few degrees at the location of the WMAP cold spot.
The dip has structure on scales of 1
to 10
cold
spot derived from WMAP data alone (Cruz et al. 2007), although McEwen et al. (2007)
did not point out this association.
The investigations reported here were conducted independently and originally without
knowledge of the McEwen et al. (2007) analysis. However, our work is a posteriori in
nature, because we were specically looking for the properties in the direction of the cold
spot. These results thus support and quantify the NVSS properties in the specic direction
of the cold spot, but should be considered along with the McEwen et al. (2007) analysis for
the purposes of an unbiased proof of a WMAP association.
2. Analysis and Characterization of the NVSS dip
We examined both the number counts of NVSS sources in the direction of the WMAP
cold spot and their smoothed brightness distribution. The NVSS 21 cm survey covers the
sky above a declination of -40
50
. Here, the region of the cold spot is seen to be the faintest region on the
image (minimum at l
II
,b
II
= 207.8
, -56.3
region.
We examined the smoothed brightness distribution across the whole NVSS survey using
another averaging technique that reduces the confusion from the brightest sources. We rst
pre-convolved the images to 800, which lls all the gaps between neighboring sources, and
then calculated the median brightness in sliding boxes 3.4
< l
II
< 90
(More precisely,
we used the horizontal line in the Aito projection tangent to the 30
line at l
II
=180
.)
The second strip was in the south, taking everything below a nominal galactic latitude of
-30
< l
II
<180
. The
minimum brightness in the cold spot region ( 20 mK) is equal to the lowest values seen in
the 16,800 square degree area of the two strips, and is 30% below the mean (Figure 3).
Formally, the probability of nding this weakest NVSS spot within the 10
(diameter)
region of the WMAP cold spot is 0.6%. This a posteriori analysis thus is in agreement with
the statistical conclusions of McEwen et al. (2007) that the NVSS properties in this region
are linked to those of WMAP. We also note that the magnitude of the NVSS dip is at the
extreme, but not an outlier of the overall brightness distribution. We thus expect that less
extreme NVSS dips would also individually correlate with WMAP cold regions, although it
may be more dicult to separate those from the primordial uctuations.
The NVSS brightness dip can be seen at a number of resolutions, and there is probably
more than one scale size present. At resolutions of 1
, 3.4
, and 10
) to -4 mK.
The dip in NVSS brightness in the WMAP cold spot region is not due to some peculiarity
4
of the NVSS survey itself. In Figure 4, we compare the 1
radius circle around the WMAP cold spot centroid. At the survey ux limit of
2.5 mJy, the decrease is 233%. This reduction in number counts is what is measured by
McEwen et al. (2007) in their statistical all-sky analysis.
3. Foreground Corrections
Several studies have claimed that the properties of the cold spot are most likely an eect
of incorrect foreground subtraction (Chiang & Naselsky 2004; Coles 2005; Liu & Zhang
2005; Tojeiro et al. 2006). This possibility has been investigated in detail for both the
rst year (Vielva et al. 2004; Cruz et al. 2005, 2006) and third (Cruz et al. 2007) year
WMAP data. The arguments against foreground subtraction errors can be summarized in
three main points 1) The region of the spot shows no spectral dependence in the WMAP
data. This is consistent with the CMB and inconsistent with the known spectral behavior
of galactic emission (as well as the SZ eect). The at (CMB-like) spectrum is found both
in temperature and kurtosis, as well as in real and wavelet space. 2) Foreground emission
is found to be low in the region of the spot, making it unlikely that an over-subtraction
could produce an apparent non-Gaussianity. 3) Similar results are found when using totally
independent methods to model and subtract out the foreground emission (Cruz et al. 2006),
namely the combined and foreground cleaned Q-V-W map (Bennett et al. 2003) and the
5
weighted internal linear combination analysis (Tegmark et al. 2003).
Now that we know that there is a reduction in the extragalactic radio source contribution
in the direction of the cold spot, we can re-examine this issue. We ask whether a 20-30%
decrement in the local brightness of the extragalactic synchrotron emission could translate
into a foreground subtraction problem that could generate the WMAP cold spot. We are
not re-examining the foreground question ab initio, simply examining the plausibility that
the decit of NVSS sources could complicate the foreground calculations in this location.
The characteristic brightness in the 3.4
. (2)
The foreground subtraction would then be in error as a function of frequency as follows,
expressed in terms of the L band temperatures :
6
F () F()
true
F()
model
= T(
L
)(
L
/)
1 (
ref
/)
3
. (3)
Three dierent reference frequencies have been used for synchrotron extrapolation the
Haslam et al. (1981) 408 MHz map (Bennett et al. 2003), the Jonas, Baart & Nicolson
(1998) 2326 MHz Rhodes/HartRAO survey (Cruz et al. 2006), and the internal K and Ka
band WMAP images (Hinshaw et al. 2006). Since the foreground subtraction errors would
be worst extrapolating from the lowest frequency template, we start at 408 MHz and look
at the problems caused by a spectral index for T that is dierent than the assumed -3.
We obtain a rough measure of the spectral index of the dip by comparing the 1
,-55
, we nd
T = 2.60.75 K (3012 mK) at 408 (1400) MHz, yielding a spectral index of -3.60.5.
Using Equation (3), this would actually lead to a WMAP hot spot if a spectral index of
-3.0 had been assumed for the extrapolation. Within the errors, the worst foreground ex-
trapolation mistakes would then be hot spots that range from +0.5 to +4.6 K at Q band,
1
resolution . In either case, this is far below the -73 K observed at this
resolution in WMAP, and we thus conclude that the decit of NVSS sources does not lead
to a signicant foreground subtraction error of either sign.
4. Discussion
The WMAP cold spot could have three origins: a) at the last scattering surface (z
1000), b) cosmologically local (z < 1), or c) galactic. Because the spot corresponds to a
signicant decit of ux (and source number counts) in the NVSS, we have argued here that
the spot is cosmologically local and hence, a localized manifestation of the late ISW eect.
Cruz et al. (2005, 2007) derived a temperature deviation for the cold spot of 20K
and a diameter of 10
d, where the dot represents dierentiation with respect to the conformal time ,
d = dt/a(t), and a is the scale factor. The integrand will be non-zero only at late times
(z<1) when the cosmological constant becomes dynamically dominant.
We start with the Newtonian potential given by
= GM/r
4G
3
r
2
b
. (4)
The proper size r and the background density
b
scale as a and a
3
, respectively. The growth
of the fractional density excess, (a) in the linear regime is given by D(a) = (a)/(a
0
), and
D(a) is the linear growth factor. For redshifts below 1 in CDM, this factor can be
approximated as (a) a(a
0
)(3a)/2. Assuming that the region is spherical, its comoving
radius is r
c
= 0.5z(c/H), and z is the line of sight diameter of the region. The change
in the potential over d can be approximated by
4G
3
r
2
c
c
(z), (5)
where subscript c refers to the average comoving size of the void and the comoving back-
ground density. In CDM the Hubble parameter is roughly given by H
2
= H
2
0
(1 + 2z),
for redshifts below 1. Incorporating these approximations we get the following relation
between the size of the region, its redshift and the temperature deviation from the late ISW:
m
2
r
c
c/H
0
3
(1 + 2z)
1/2
(1 + z)
2
1
2
T
T
(6)
We now ask under what conditions this expression is consistent with the observed rela-
tion between the size and temperature of the cold spot derived earlier, (T/T) 4.510
5
.
For
m
0.3 and = 1 (i.e. a completely empty region) this leads to the simplied re-
lation, (1 + z) 6, where is in degrees, as before. Since the spots association with the
NVSS places it at z 0.5 1, this leads to a self-consistent value of the radius of 3 4
resolution, centered at l
II
, b
II
= 209
, -57
diameter circle indicates the position and size of the WMAP cold spot.
12
Fig. 2. Aito projection of NVSS survey, centered at l
II
, b
II
= 180
, 0
, showing the
median brightness in sliding boxes of 3.4
elds, with 1
resolution, centered at l
II
, b
II
= 209
, -57