5–9 Jul 2026
University of Canterbury
Pacific/Auckland timezone

Directional variations of cosmological parameters from the Planck CMB data

6 Jul 2026, 15:40
20m
Room E5 (Rātā / Engineering Core Building, University of Canterbury)

Room E5

Rātā / Engineering Core Building, University of Canterbury

63 Creyke Road, Ilam, Christchurch 8041, New Zealand
Parallel Session Talk Parallel sessions

Speaker

Ming Chung Chu (The Chinese University of Hong Kong (HK))

Description

In an earlier work, we performed a statistical analysis of the angular distribution of the cosmological parameters by adding hemispherical masks in different directions to the Planck 2018 CMB temperature and polarization data. We found that the standard ÅCDM parameters Ωbh2, Ωch2, ns, 100θMC, and H0 closely follow a dipole form, with 2-3 σ-level directional variations. The dipole axes all generally align around a direction that is about 45° away from that of the CMB kinematic dipole. In this talk, we show that the directional variation of the CMB angular acoustic angle calculated with the fully asymmetric Bianchi Type I metric cannot account for the observed dipole-like anisotropy. Rather, we argue that local structures are likely to be the cause. If confirmed, our result implies that future CMB analyses should account for this foreground effect.

Research Area Cosmology: late universe

Author

Ming Chung Chu (The Chinese University of Hong Kong (HK))

Co-author

Mr Boris Hoi-Lun Ng (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Presentation materials