SwissMAP Logo
Log in
  • About us
    • Organization
    • Professors
    • Senior Researchers
    • Postdocs
    • PhD Students
    • Alumni
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
    • Online Events
    • Videos
    • Newsletters
    • Press Coverage
    • Perspectives Journal
    • Interviews
  • Research
    • Basic Notions
    • Phase III Directions
    • Phases I & II Projects
    • Publications
    • SwissMAP Research Station
  • Awards, Visitors & Vacancies
    • Awards
    • Innovator Prize
    • Visitors
    • Vacancies
  • Outreach & Education
    • Masterclasses & Doctoral Schools
    • Mathscope
    • Maths Club
    • Athena Project
    • ETH Math Youth Academy
    • SPRING
    • Junior Euler Society
    • General Relativity for High School Students
    • Outreach Resources
    • Exhibitions
    • Previous Programs
    • Events in Outreach
    • News in Outreach
  • Equal Opportunities
    • Mentoring Program
    • Financial Support
    • SwissMAP Scholars
    • Events in Equal Opportunities
    • News in Equal Opportunities
  • Contact
    • Corporate Design
  • Basic Notions
  • Phase III Directions
  • Phases I & II Projects
  • Publications
  • SwissMAP Research Station

Fast and spurious: a robust determination of our peculiar velocity with future galaxy surveys

Fabien Lacasa, Camille Bonvin, Charles Dalang, Ruth Durrer

28/2/24 Published in : arXiv:2402.18438

To date, the most precise measurement of the observer's peculiar velocity comes from the dipole in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). This velocity also generates a dipole in the source number counts, whose amplitude is governed not only by the observer velocity, but also by specific properties of the sources, that are difficult to determine precisely. Quantitative studies of the source number counts currently give dipoles which are reasonably well aligned with the CMB dipole, but with a significantly larger amplitude than that of the CMB dipole. In this work, we explore an alternative way of measuring the observer velocity from the source number counts, using correlations between neighboring spherical harmonic coefficients, induced by the velocity. We show that these correlations contain both a term sensitive to the source properties and another one directly given by the observer velocity. We explore the potential of a Euclid-like survey to directly measure this second contribution, independently of the characteristics of the population of sources. We find that the method can reach a precision of 4%, corresponding to a detection significance of 24 sigma, on the observer velocity. This will settle with precision the present "dipole tension".

Entire article

Phase I & II research project(s)

  • String Theory
  • Field Theory

Phase III direction(s)

  • From Field Theory to Geometry and Topology

Asymptotic quantization on Riemannian manifolds via covering growth estimates

On the local uniqueness of steady states for the Vlasov-Poisson system

  • Leading house

  • Co-leading house


The National Centres of Competence in Research (NCCRs) are a funding scheme of the Swiss National Science Foundation

© SwissMAP 2025 - All rights reserved