Bibcode
DOI
de Oliveira-Costa, Angélica; Tegmark, Max; Finkbeiner, Douglas P.; Davies, R. D.; Gutierrez, Carlos M.; Haffner, L. M.; Jones, Aled W.; Lasenby, A. N.; Rebolo, R.; Reynolds, Ron J.; Tufte, S. L.; Watson, R. A.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 567, Issue 1, pp. 363-369.
Advertised on:
3
2002
Journal
Citations
81
Refereed citations
69
Description
We present a new puzzle involving Galactic microwave emission and
attempt to resolve it. On one hand, a cross-correlation analysis of the
Wisconsin Hα Mapper map with the Tenerife 10 and 15 GHz maps shows
that the well-known DIRBE correlated microwave emission cannot be
dominated by free-free emission. On the other hand, recent
high-resolution observations in the 8-10 GHz range with the Green Bank
140 foot telescope by Finkbeiner et al. failed to find the corresponding
8 σ signal that would be expected in the simplest spinning-dust
models. So what physical mechanism is causing this ubiquitous
dust-correlated emission? We argue for a model predicting that spinning
dust is the culprit after all, but that the corresponding small grains
are well correlated with the larger grains seen at 100 μm only on
large angular scales. In support of this grain-segregation model, we
find that the best spinning-dust template involves higher frequency maps
in the range 12-60 μm, in which emission from transiently heated
small grains is important. Upcoming cosmic microwave background
experiments such as ground-based interferometers, the Microwave
Anisotropy Probe, and the Planck low-frequency interferometer with high
resolution at low frequencies should allow a definitive test of this
model.