NINE-YEAR WILKINSON MICROWAVE ANISOTROPY PROBE (WMAP) OBSERVATIONS: FINAL MAPS AND RESULTS
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218-2686 (United States)
- Department of Physics, Jadwin Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-0708 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1 (Canada)
- ADNET Systems, Inc., 7515 Mission Drive, Suite A100, Lanham, MD 20706 (United States)
- Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, ON N2L 2Y5 (Canada)
- School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, 116 Church Street S.E., Minneapolis, MN 55455 (United States)
- Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Karl-Schwarzschild Str. 1, D-85741 Garching (Germany)
- Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, 60 St. George Street, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3H8 (Canada)
- Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Peyton Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-1001 (United States)
- Code 665, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771 (United States)
- Oxford Astrophysics, Denys Wilkinson Building, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH (United Kingdom)
- Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, 550 West 120th Street, Mail Code 5247, New York, NY 10027-6902 (United States)
- Departments of Astrophysics and Physics, KICP and EFI, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637 (United States)
We present the final nine-year maps and basic results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) mission. The full nine-year analysis of the time-ordered data provides updated characterizations and calibrations of the experiment. We also provide new nine-year full sky temperature maps that were processed to reduce the asymmetry of the effective beams. Temperature and polarization sky maps are examined to separate cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy from foreground emission, and both types of signals are analyzed in detail. We provide new point source catalogs as well as new diffuse and point source foreground masks. An updated template-removal process is used for cosmological analysis; new foreground fits are performed, and new foreground-reduced CMB maps are presented. We now implement an optimal C {sup –1} weighting to compute the temperature angular power spectrum. The WMAP mission has resulted in a highly constrained ΛCDM cosmological model with precise and accurate parameters in agreement with a host of other cosmological measurements. When WMAP data are combined with finer scale CMB, baryon acoustic oscillation, and Hubble constant measurements, we find that big bang nucleosynthesis is well supported and there is no compelling evidence for a non-standard number of neutrino species (N {sub eff} = 3.84 ± 0.40). The model fit also implies that the age of the universe is t {sub 0} = 13.772 ± 0.059 Gyr, and the fit Hubble constant is H {sub 0} = 69.32 ± 0.80 km s{sup –1} Mpc{sup –1}. Inflation is also supported: the fluctuations are adiabatic, with Gaussian random phases; the detection of a deviation of the scalar spectral index from unity, reported earlier by the WMAP team, now has high statistical significance (n{sub s} = 0.9608 ± 0.0080); and the universe is close to flat/Euclidean (Ω{sub k} = -0.0027{sup +0.0039}{sub -0.0038}). Overall, the WMAP mission has resulted in a reduction of the cosmological parameter volume by a factor of 68,000 for the standard six-parameter ΛCDM model, based on CMB data alone. For a model including tensors, the allowed seven-parameter volume has been reduced by a factor 117,000. Other cosmological observations are in accord with the CMB predictions, and the combined data reduces the cosmological parameter volume even further. With no significant anomalies and an adequate goodness of fit, the inflationary flat ΛCDM model and its precise and accurate parameters rooted in WMAP data stands as the standard model of cosmology.
- OSTI ID:
- 22273339
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series, Vol. 208, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0067-0049
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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