Impact of local structure on the cosmic radio dipole

¹ Fakultät für Physik, Universität Bielefeld, Postfach 100131, 33501 Bielefeld, Germany
e-mail: matthiasr@physik.uni-bielefeld.de
² Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth, Burnaby Road, Portsmouth PO1 3FX, UK

Received: 6 February 2014
Accepted: 12 April 2014

Abstract

We investigate the contribution that a local over- or under-density can have on linear cosmic dipole estimations. We focus here on radio surveys, such as the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS), and forthcoming surveys such as those with the LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR), the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The NVSS has already been used to estimate the cosmic radio dipole; it was shown recently that this radio dipole amplitude is larger than expected from a purely kinematic effect, assuming the velocity inferred from the dipole of the cosmic microwave background. We show here that a significant contribution to this excess could come from a local void or similar structure. In contrast to the kinetic contribution to the radio dipole, the structure dipole depends on the flux threshold of the survey and the wave band, which opens an opportunity to distinguish the two contributions.