Detection of a dipole in the handedness of spiral galaxies with redshifts z similar to 0.04

作者：Longo Michael J^*

来源：Physics Letters B, 2011, 699(4): 224-229.

DOI：10.1016/j.physletb.2011.04.008

• Cosmic parity violation
• Preferred axis
• Spiral galaxy spin asymmetry

A preference for spiral galaxies in one sector of the sky to be left-handed or right-handed spirals would indicate a parity violating asymmetry in the overall universe and a preferred axis. This study uses 15,158 spiral galaxies with redshifts < 0.085 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. An unbinned analysis for a dipole component that made no prior assumptions for the dipole axis gives a dipole asymmetry of -0.0408 +/- 0.011 with a probability of occurring by chance of 7.9 x 10(-4). A similar asymmetry is seen in the southern Galaxy spin catalog of lye and Sugai. The axis of the dipole asymmetry lies at approx. (l, b) = (52 degrees, 68.5 degrees), roughly along that of our Galaxy and close to alignments observed in the WMAP cosmic microwave background distributions. The observed spin correlation extends out to separations similar to 210 Mpc/h, while spirals with separations < 20 Mpc/h have smaller spin correlations.

• 出版日期2011-5-16