Power Asymmetry in Cosmic Microwave Background Fluctuations from Full Sky to Sub-Degree Scales: Is the Universe Isotropic?

We repeat and extend the analysis of Eriksen et al. and Hansen et al., testing the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background fluctuations. We find that the hemispherical power asymmetry previously reported for the largest scales ℓ = 2-40 extends to much smaller scales. In fact, for the full multipole range ℓ = 2-600, significantly more power is found in the hemisphere centered at (θ = 107° ± 10°, ∅ = 226° ± 10°) in galactic co-latitude and longitude than in the opposite hemisphere, consistent with the previously detected direction of asymmetry for ℓ = 2-40. We adopt a model selection test where the direction and amplitude of asymmetry, as well as the multipole range, are free parameters. A model with an asymmetric distribution of power for ℓ = 2-600 is found to be preferred over the isotropic model at the 0.4% significance level, taking into account the additional parameters required to describe it. A similar direction of asymmetry is found independently in all six subranges of 100 multipoles between ℓ = 2-600. None of our 9800 isotropic simulated maps show a similarly consistent direction of asymmetry over such a large multipole range. No known systematic effects or foregrounds are found to be able to explain the asymmetry.