Geometric Gaussianity and Non-Gaussianity in the Cosmic Microwave Background

Abstract

In this paper, Gaussianity of eigenmodes and non-Gaussianity in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature fluctuations in two smallest compact hyperbolic (CH) models are investigated. First, it is numerically found that the expansion coefficients of low-lying eigenmodes on the two CH manifolds behave as if they are Gaussian random numbers at almost all the places. Next, non-Gaussianity of the temperature fluctuations in the (l,m) space in these models is studied. Assuming that the initial fluctuations are Gaussian, the real expansion coefficients b_{l m} of the temperature fluctuations in the sky are found to be distinctively non-Gaussian. In particular, the cosmic variances are found to be much larger than that for Gaussian models. On the other hand, the anisotropic structure is vastly erased if one averages the fluctuations at a number of different observing points because of the Gaussian pseudo-randomness of the eigenmodes. Thus the dominant contribution to the two-point correlation functions comes from the isotropic terms described by the angular power spectra C_l. Finally, topological quantities: the total length and the genus of isotemperature contours are investigated. The variances of total length and genus at high and low threshold levels are found to be considerably larger than that of Gaussian models while the means almost agree with them.