科研之友
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摘要
Aims. Several authors have claimed to detect a significant cross-correlation between microwave WMAP anisotropies and the SDSS galaxy distribution. We repeat these analyses to determine the different cross-correlation uncertainties caused by re-sampling errors and field-to-field fluctuations. The first type of error concerns overlapping sky regions, while the second type concerns non-overlapping sky regions.
Methods. To measure the re-sampling errors, we use bootstrap and jack-knife techniques. For the field-to-field fluctuations, we use three methods: 1) evaluation of the dispersion in the cross-correlation when correlating separated regions of WMAP with the original region of SDSS; 2) use of mock Monte Carlo WMAP maps; 3) a new method (developed in this article), which measures the error as a function of the integral of the product of the self-correlations for each map.
Results. The average cross-correlation for b > 30 deg is significantly stronger than the re-sampling errors - both the jack-knife and bootstrap techniques provide similar results - but it is of the order of the field-to-field fluctuations. This is confirmed by the cross-correlation between anisotropies and galaxies in more than the half of the sample being null within re-sampling errors.
Conclusions. Re-sampling methods underestimate the errors. Field-to-field fluctuations dominate the detected signals. The ratio of signal to re-sampling errors is larger than unity in a way that strongly depends on the selected sky region. We therefore conclude that there is no evidence yet of a significant detection of the integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect. Hence, the value of Omega(Lambda) approximate to 0.8 obtained by the authors who assumed they were observing the ISW effect would appear to have originated from noise analysis.
- 出版日期2010-4
