Local anomalies around the third peak in the CMB angular power spectrum of WMAP 7-year data

We estimate the power spectra of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) temperature anisotropy in localized regions of the sky using the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) 7-year data. We find that the north and south hat regions at high Galactic latitude (|b| ≥ 30°) show an anomaly in the power spectrum amplitude around the third peak, which is statistically significant up to 3σ. We try to explain the cause of the observed anomaly by analyzing the low Galactic latitude (|b| < 30°) regions where the galaxy contamination is expected to be stronger, and the regions weakly or strongly dominated by WMAP instrument noise. We also consider the possible effect of unresolved radio point sources. We find another but less statistically significant anomaly in the low Galactic latitude north and south regions whose behavior is opposite to the one at high latitude. Our analysis shows that the observed north-south anomaly at high latitude becomes weaker on regions with high number of observations (weak instrument noise), suggesting that the anomaly is significant at sky regions that are dominated by the WMAP instrument noise. We have checked that the observed north-south anomaly has weak dependences on the bin-width used in the power spectrum estimation, and on the Galactic latitude cut. We also discuss the possibility that the detected anomaly may hinge on the particular choice of the multipole bin around the third peak. We anticipate that the issue of whether or not the anomaly is intrinsic one or due to WMAP instrument noise will be resolved by the forthcoming Planck data.