The effect of asymmetric beams in the wilkinson microwave anisotropy probe experiment

Abstract

We generate simulations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature field as observed by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite, taking into account the detailed shape of the asymmetric beams and scanning strategy of the experiment, and use these to re-estimate the WMAP beam transfer functions. This method avoids the need of artificially symmetrizing the beams, as done in the baseline WMAP approach, and instead measures the total convolution effect by direct simulation. We find only small differences with respect to the nominal transfer functions, typically less than 1% everywhere, and less than 0.5% at ℓ < 400. The net effect on the CMB power spectrum is less than 0.6%. The effect on all considered cosmological parameters is negligible. For instance, we find that the spectral index of scalar perturbations after taking into account the beam asymmetries is n s = 0.964 ± 0.014, corresponding to a negative shift of -0.1σ compared to the previously released WMAP results. Our CMB sky simulations are made publicly available and can be used for general studies of asymmetric beam effects in the WMAP data. © 2009. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.