Supervoid Origin of the Cold Spot in the Cosmic Microwave Background

Kovács, András and Szapudi, István and Granett, Benjamin R. and Frei, Zsolt and Silk, Joseph (2015) Supervoid Origin of the Cold Spot in the Cosmic Microwave Background. PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMICAL UNION, 10 (306). pp. 269-272. ISSN 1743-9213

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Abstract

We use a WISE-2MASS-Pan-STARRS1 galaxy catalog to search for a supervoid in the direction of the Cosmic Microwave Background Cold Spot. We obtain photometric redshifts using our multicolor data set to create a tomographic map of the galaxy distribution. The radial density profile centred on the Cold Spot shows a large low density region, extending over 10’s of degrees. Motivated by previous Cosmic Microwave Background results, we test for underdensities within two angular radii, 5◦ , and 15◦ . Our data, combined with an earlier measurement by Granett et al. 2010, are consistent with a large Rvoid = (192 ± 15)h−1Mpc (2σ) supervoid with δ ≃ −0.13 ± 0.03 centered at z = 0.22 ± 0.01. Such a supervoid, constituting a ∼ 3.5σ fluctuation in the ΛCDM model, is a plausible cause for the Cold Spot.

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