Non-Gaussianity of the distribution tails in CMB

Abstract

We analyze statistical properties of the separate multipole moments of the CMB temperature maps and find that the distribution tails are slightly non-Gaussian. Moreover, the deviation from Gaussianity peaks sharply at around $l\sim45\pm10$. If the detected non-Gaussianities should be attributed to the remaining foreground contamination from the galactic plane, an appearance of a similar peak in different frequency bands is unexpected. The presence of the peak was also confirmed by the analysis of weighted multipoles which is less susceptible to the galactic noise. A separate analysis of the multipoles with odd and even $l+m$ shows two opposite types of non-Gaussianities which cannot be explained with only galactic foregrounds. We argue that cosmic strings or correlated gravitational waves could lead to the observed effect.