Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 181301 (2008) [4 pages]Evidence of Primordial Non-Gaussianity (fNL) in the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 3-Year Data at 2.8σReceived 7 December 2007; revised 6 March 2008; published 7 May 2008 We present evidence for primordial non-Gaussianity of the local type (fNL) in the temperature anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background. Analyzing the bispectrum of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 3-year data up to ℓmax=750 we find 27<fNL<147 (95% C.L.). This amounts to a rejection of fNL=0 at 2.8σ, disfavoring canonical single-field slow-roll inflation. The signal is robust to variations in lmax, frequency and masks. No known foreground, instrument systematic, or secondary anisotropy explains it. We explore the impact of several analysis choices on the quoted significance and find 2.5σ to be conservative. © 2008 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.181301
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.181301
PACS:
98.70.Vc, 98.80.Es
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