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Detection of a supervoid aligned with the cold spot of the cosmic microwave background

Szapudi, I.; Kovács, A.; Granett, B.R.; Frei, Z.; Silk, J.; Burgett, W.; Cole, S.; Draper, P.W.; Farrow, D.J.; Kaiser, N.; Magnier, E.A.; Metcalfe, N.; Morgan, J.S.; Price, P.; Tonry, J.; Wainscoat, R.

Detection of a supervoid aligned with the cold spot of the cosmic microwave background Thumbnail


Authors

I. Szapudi

A. Kovács

B.R. Granett

Z. Frei

J. Silk

W. Burgett

P.W. Draper

D.J. Farrow

N. Kaiser

E.A. Magnier

J.S. Morgan

P. Price

J. Tonry

R. Wainscoat



Abstract

We use the WISE-2MASS infrared galaxy catalogue matched with Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) galaxies to search for a supervoid in the direction of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) cold spot (CS). Our imaging catalogue has median redshift z ≃ 0.14, and we obtain photometric redshifts from PS1 optical colours to create a tomographic map of the galaxy distribution. The radial profile centred on the CS shows a large low-density region, extending over tens of degrees. Motivated by previous CMB results, we test for underdensities within two angular radii, 5°, and 15°. The counts in photometric redshift bins show significantly low densities at high detection significance, ≳5σ and ≳6σ, respectively, for the two fiducial radii. The line-of-sight position of the deepest region of the void is z ≃ 0.15–0.25. Our data, combined with an earlier measurement by Granett, Szapudi & Neyrinck, are consistent with a large Rvoid = (220 ± 50) h−1 Mpc supervoid with δm ≃ −0.14 ± 0.04 centred at z = 0.22 ± 0.03. Such a supervoid, constituting at least a ≃3.3σ fluctuation in a Gaussian distribution of the Λ cold dark matter model, is a plausible cause for the CS.

Citation

Szapudi, I., Kovács, A., Granett, B., Frei, Z., Silk, J., Burgett, W., …Wainscoat, R. (2015). Detection of a supervoid aligned with the cold spot of the cosmic microwave background. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 450(1), 288-294. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv488

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 4, 2015
Online Publication Date Apr 16, 2015
Publication Date Jun 11, 2015
Deposit Date Aug 3, 2015
Publicly Available Date Sep 4, 2015
Journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Print ISSN 0035-8711
Electronic ISSN 1365-2966
Publisher Royal Astronomical Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 450
Issue 1
Pages 288-294
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv488
Keywords Surveys, Cosmic background radiation, Cosmology: observations, Large-scale structure of Universe.

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Copyright Statement
This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2015 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.





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