Band Power Spectra in the COBE DMR 4-Year Anisotropy Maps

Abstract

We employ a pixel-based likelihood technique to estimate the angular power spectrum of the COBE Differential Microwave Radiometer (DMR) 4-year sky maps. The spectrum is consistent with a scale-invariant power-law form with a normalization, expressed in terms of the expected quadrupole anisotropy, of Q_{rms-PS|n=1} = 18 +/- 1.4 uK, and a best-fit spectral index of 1.2 +/- 0.3. The normalization is somewhat smaller than we concluded from the 2-year data, mainly due to additional Galactic modeling. We extend the analysis to investigate the extent to which the ``small" quadrupole observed in our sky is statistically consistent with a power-law spectrum. The most likely quadrupole amplitude is somewhat dependent on the details of Galactic foreground subtraction and data selection, ranging between 7 and 10 uK, but in no case is there compelling evidence that the quadrupole is too small to be consistent with a power-law spectrum. We conclude with a likelihood analysis of the band power amplitude in each of four spectral bands between l = 2 and 40, and find no evidence for deviations from a simple power-law spectrum.