The Australia Telescope search for cosmic microwave background anisotropy

In an attempt to detect cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy on arcmin scales, we have made an 8.7-GHz image of a sky region with a resolution of 2 arcmin and high surface brightness sensitivity using the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) in an ultracompact configuration. The foreground discrete-source confusion was estimated from observations with higher resolution at the same frequency and in a scaled array at a lower frequency. Following the subtraction of the foreground confusion, the field shows no features in excess of the instrument noise. This limits the CMB anisotropy flat-band power to Q _flat < 23.6 μ K with 95 per cent confidence; the ATCA filter function (which is available at the website www.atnf.csiro.au/Research/cmbr/cmbr_atca.html) F _l in multipole l -space peaks at l _eff = 4700 and has half-maximum values at l  = 3350 and 6050.     

Constraints on structure formation models from the Sunyaev–Zel'dovich effect

In the context of cold dark matter (CDM) cosmological models, we have simulated images of the brightness temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) sky owing to the Sunyaev–Zel'dovich (S–Z) effect in a cosmological distribution of clusters. We compare the image statistics with recent ATCA limits on arcmin-scale CMB anisotropy. The S–Z effect produces a generically non-Gaussian field and we compute the variance in the simulated temperature-anisotropy images, after convolution with the ATCA beam pattern, for different cosmological models. All the models are normalized to the 4-yr COBE data. We find an increase in the simulated-sky temperature variance with increase in the cosmological density parameter Ω₀. A comparison with the upper limits on the sky variance set by the ATCA appears to rule out our closed-universe model: low-Ω₀ open-universe models are preferred. The result is independent of any present day observations of σ ₈.