Cosmological Applications of the Gaussian Kinematic Formula

The Gaussian Kinematic Formula (GKF, see Adler and Taylor (2007,2011)) is an extremely powerful tool allowing for explicit analytic predictions of expected values of Minkowski functionals under realistic experimental conditions for cosmological data collections. In this paper, we implement Minkowski functionals on multipoles and needlet components of CMB fields, thus allowing a better control of cosmic variance and extraction of information on both harmonic and real domains; we then exploit the GKF to provide their expected values on spherical maps, in the presence of arbitrary sky masks, and under nonGaussian circumstances.

Spherical Maps: Their Construction, Properties, and Approximation

The Gaussian map and its allied visibility map on a unit sphere find wide applications for orientating the workpiece for machining by numerical control machines and for probing by coordinate measurement machines. They also provide useful aids in computerized scene analysis, computation of surface-surface intersection, component design for manufacturing and fabrication procedures. Spherical convex hulls and spherical circles are two geometric constructs used to approximate the Gaussian maps and the visibility maps. The duality and the complementarity of these spherical maps are examined so as to derive efficient algorithms.