Collisions with other Universes: the Optimal Analysis of the WMAP data

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An appealing theory is that our current patch of universe was born as a nucleation bubble from a phase of false vacuum eternal inflation. We search for evidence for this theory by looking for the signal imprinted on the CMB that is generated when another bubble "universe" collides with our own. We create an efficient and optimal estimator for the signal in the WMAP 7-year data. We find no detectable signal, and constrain the amplitude, a, of the initial curvature perturbation that would be generated by a collision: -4.66 × 10⁻⁸ < a ()⁴/³ < 4.73 × 10⁻⁸ [Mpc⁻¹] at 95% confidence where is the angular radius of the bubble signal.