Beyond the power spectrum: primordial and secondary non-Gaussianity in the microwave background

Abstract

Cosmic microwave background observations are most commonly analyzed by estimating the power spectrum. In the limit where the CMB statistics are perfectly Gaussian, this extracts all the information, but the CMB also contains detectable non-Gaussian contributions from secondary, and possibly primordial, sources. We review possible sources of CMB non-Gaussianity and describe statistical techniques which are optimized for measuring them, complementing the power spectrum analysis. The machinery of $N$-point correlation functions provides a unifying framework for optimal estimation of primordial non-Gaussian signals or gravitational lensing. We review recent results from applying these estimators to data from the WMAP satellite mission.

Invited Review, ASP conference proceedings of the "Frank N. Bash Symposium 2009: New Horizons in Astronomy"