On Axial and Plane--Mirror Inhomogeneities in the WMAP3 Cosmic Microwave Background Maps

Abstract

We study inhomogeneities in the distribution of the excursion sets in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature maps obtained by the three years survey of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). At temperature thresholds |T|<90 μK, the distributions of the excursion sets with over 200 pixels are concentrated in two regions, nearly at the antipodes, with galactic coordinates l= 94^\circ.7, b= 34^\circ.4 and l= 279^\circ.8, b= -29^\circ.2. The centers of these two regions drift towards the equator when the temperature threshold is increased. The centers are located close to one of the vectors of \ell =3 multipole. The two patterns of the substructures in the distribution of the excursion sets are mirrored, with χ^2=0.7-1.5. There is no obvious origin of this effect in the noise structure of WMAP, and there is no evidence for a dependence on the galactic cut. Would this effect be cosmological, it could be an indication of an anomalously large component of horizon-size density perturbations, independent of one of the spatial coordinates, and/or of a non-trivial slab-like spatial topology of the Universe.