Topological Analysis of High-Resolution CMB Maps

Original · EN

We report the development of numerical tools for the topological analysis of sub--degree resolution, all--sky maps. Software to be released in the HEALFAST (V0.9) package defines neighbour relationships for the HEALPIX tessellation of the sphere. We apply this routine to a fast extrema search which scales strictly linearly in the number of pixels, Nₚ. We also present a highly efficient algorithm for simulating the gradient vector and curvature tensor fields ``on--the--fly'' with the temperature map, needing only of order Nₚ ₂ Nₚ more operations.