THE FOURIER-SPACE STATISTICS OF SEED-LIKE COSMOLOGICAL PERTURBATIONS

We propose a new test for distinguishing observationally between cosmological models based on seed-like primordial perturbations (such as cosmic strings or textures) and models based on Gaussian fluctuations. We investigate analytically the Fourier-space statistical properties of temperature or density fluctuation patterns generated by seed-like objects and compare these properties with those of Gaussian fluctuations generated during inflation. We show that the proposed statistical test can easily identify temperature fluctuations produced by a superposition of a small number of seeds per horizon scale for any observational angular resolution and any seed geometry. Due to the central limit theorem, however, the distinction becomes more difficult as the number of seeds in the fluctuation pattern increases.