A Statistical Characterization of Galactic Dust Emission as a Non-Gaussian Foreground of the Cosmic Microwave Background
J. Jewell;
ApJ, 2001, 557, 700
ABSTRACT:A statistical characterization of the Galactic dust emission as observed in the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) maps of Schlegel and
colleagues is provided by the continuous wavelet transform.
The wavelet
coefficients of the dust emission have highly non-Gaussian marginal densities, as
quantified by their skewness and kurtosis.
An information theoretic measure of
the distinguishability of the IRAS maps and random phase realizations is
also investigated and found to give a highly significant detection of
non-Gaussianity.
The efficiency of these wavelet-based statistics is quantified by the
rate at which the detection of non-Gaussianity is lost as a function of the
fraction of phases randomized.
The statistics considered here can be used to
test for residual dust emission in maps of the cosmic microwave background,
or to test for non-Gaussianity of a spatially localized nature.
KEYWORDS: cosmology: cosmic microwave background, ism: dust, extinction, methods: statistical
PERSOKEY:statistical analysis, dust, fir, WAVELET, ,
CODE: jewell2001