New Optimised Estimators for the Primordial Trispectrum

Understand

Cosmic microwave background studies of non-Gaussianity involving higher-order multispectra can distinguish between early universe theories that predict nearly identical power spectra.

• However, the recovery of higher-order multispectra is difficult from realistic data due to their complex response to inhomogeneous noise and partial sky coverage, which are often difficult to model analytically.
• A traditional alternative is to use one-point cumulants of various orders, which collapse the information present in a multispectrum to one number.
• The disadvantage of such a radical compression of the data is a loss of information as to the source of the statistical behaviour.