The Universe is not statistically isotropic

Abstract

The standard cosmological model predicts statistically isotropic cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations. However, several summary statistics of CMB isotropy have anomalous values, including: the low level of large-angle temperature correlations, $S_{1/2}$; the excess power in odd versus even low-$\ell$ multipoles, $R^{TT}$; the (low) variance of large-scale temperature anisotropies in the ecliptic north, but not the south, $\sigma^2_{16}$; and the alignment and planarity of the quadrupole and octopole of temperature, $S_{QO}$. Individually, their low $p$-values are weak evidence for violation of statistical isotropy. The correlations of the tail values of these statistics have not to this point been studied. We show that the joint probability of all four of these happening by chance in $\Lambda$CDM is likely $\leq3\times10^{-8}$. This constitutes more than $5\sigma$ evidence for violation of statistical isotropy.Comment: 6 page