Gaussianity of degree-scale cosmic microwave background anisotropy observations

We present results from a first test of the Gaussianity of degree-scale cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy. We investigate Gaussianity of the CMB anisotropy by studying the topology of CMB anisotropy maps from the QMAP and Saskatoon experiments. We also study the QMASK map, a combination map of the QMAP and Saskatoon data. We measure the genus from noise-suppressed Wiener-filtered maps at an angular scale of about 1.degrees5. To test the Gaussianity of the observed anisotropy, we compare these results to those derived from a collection of simulated maps for each experiment in a Gaussian spatially flat, cosmological constant dominated, cold dark matter model. The genus-threshold level relations of the QMAP and Saskatoon maps are consistent with Gaussianity. While the combination QMASK map has a mildly non-Gaussian genus curve that is not a consequence of known foreground contamination, this result is not statistically significant at the 2 sigma level. These results extend previous upper limits on the non-Gaussianity of the large angular scale (> 10 degrees) CMB anisotropy (measured by the COBE Differential Microwave Radiometer experiment) down to degree angular scales.