Uncorrelated measurements of the CMB power spectrum

Abstract

We describe how to compute estimates of the power spectrum C_l from Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) maps that not only retain all the cosmological information, but also have uncorrelated error bars and well-behaved window functions. We apply this technique to the 4-year COBE/DMR data, and tabulate eight uncorrelated band-powers.

3 pages, with 3 figures included. Color figures and cut-and-paste band powers available at http://www.sns.ias.edu/~max/cl.html (faster from the US), from http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/~max/cl.html (faster from Europe) or from max@ias.edu