Topological Analysis of HighResolution CMB Maps.pdfVIP

TOPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF HIGH–RESOLUTION CMB MAPS a B.D. WANDELT, E. HIVON, K.M. GORSKI, Theoretical Astrophysics Centre (TAC), Juliane Maries Vej 30, 8 2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark 9 9 1 We report the development of numerical tools for the topological analysis of sub–degree res- olution, all–sky maps. Software to be released in the HEALFAST (V0.9) package defines r a neighbour relationships for the HEALPIX tessellation of the sphere. We apply this routine to a fast extrema search which scales strictly linearly in the number of pixels, N . We also M p present a highly efficient algorithm for simulating the gradient vector and curvature tensor fields “on–the–fly” with the temperature map, needing only of order N log N more opera- 0 p 2 p 3 tions. 2 v 1 Introduction 7 1 3 The Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) and the Planck Surveyor satellite missions promise to 3 produce high–resolution full sky maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) within the 0 next decade. These maps will contain a great deal of cosmologically relevant information and 8 9 therefore present a tremendous opportunity for doing high–precision cosmology. Owing to the / unprecedented wealth of data, this opportunity brings with it the challenge of developing tools h p which help extract this information in manageable processing tim