An efficient technique to determine the power spectrum from cosmic microwave background sky maps

Peng Oh Siang, David N. Spergel, Gary Hinshaw

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

59 Scopus citations

Abstract

There is enormous potential to advance cosmology from statistical characterizations of cosmic microwave background (CMB) sky maps. The angular power spectrum of the microwave anisotropy is a particularly important statistic. Existing algorithms for computing the angular power spectrum of a pixelized map typically require O(N3) operations and O(N2) storage, where N is the number of independent pixels in the map. The MAP and Planck satellites will produce megapixel maps of the CMB temperature at multiple frequencies; thus, existing algorithms are not computationally feasible. In this article, we introduce an algorithm that requires O(N2) operations and O(N3/2) storage that can find the minimum variance power spectrum from sky map data roughly one million times faster than was previously possible. This makes feasible an analysis that was hitherto intractable.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)551-563
Number of pages13
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume510
Issue number2 PART 1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 10 1999

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

Keywords

  • Cosmic microwave background
  • Methods: statistical

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