Non-Gaussianity in the HILC foreground-reduced three-year WMAP CMB map

Understand

A detection or nondetection of primordial non-Gaussianity in the CMB data is essential not only to test alternative models of the physics of the early universe but also to discriminate among classes of inflationary models.

• Given this far reaching consequences of such a non-Gaussianity detection for our understanding of the physics of the early universe, it is important to employ alternative indicators in order to have further information about the Gaussianity features of CMB that may be helpful for identifying their origins.
• In this way, a considerable effort has recently gone into the design of non-Gaussianity indicators, and in their application in the search for deviation from Gaussianity in the CMB data.
• Recently we have proposed two new large-angle non-Gaussianity indicators which provide measures of the departure from Gaussianity on large angular scales.