Too few spots in the cosmic microwave background

We investigate the abundance of large-scale hot and cold spots in the WMAP-5 temperature maps and find considerable discrepancies compared to Gaussian simulations based on the $\Lambda \mathrm{CDM}$ best-fit model. Too few spots are present in the reliably observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) region, i.e., outside the foreground-contaminated parts excluded by the KQ75 mask. Even simulated maps created from the original WMAP-5 estimated multipoles contain more spots than visible in the measured CMB maps. A strong suppression of the lowest multipoles would lead to better agreement. The lack of spots is reflected in a low mean temperature fluctuation on scales of several degrees (4°–8°), which is only shared by less than 1% (0.16%–0.62%) of Gaussian $\Lambda \mathrm{CDM}$ simulations. After removing the quadrupole, the probabilities change to 2.5%–8.0%. This shows the importance of the anomalously low quadrupole for the statistical significance of the missing spots. We also analyze a possible violation of Gaussianity or statistical isotropy (spots are distributed differently outside and inside the masked region).