Abstract & Overview
We present the final nine-year maps and basic results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe ( WMAP ) mission. The full nine-year analysis of the time-ordered data provides updated characterizations and calibrations of the experiment. We also provide new nine-year full sky temperature maps that were processed to reduce the asymmetry of the effective beams. Temperature and polarization sky maps are examined to separate cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy from foreground emission, and both types of signals are analyzed in detail. We provide new point source catalogs as well as new diffuse and point source foreground masks. An updated template-removal process is used for cosmological analysis; new foreground fits are performed, and new foreground-reduced CMB maps are presented. We now implement an optimal C −1 weighting to compute the temperature angular power spectrum. The WMAP mission has resulted in a highly constrained ΛCDM cosmological model with precise and accurate parameters in agreement with a host of other cosmological measurements. When WMAP data are combined with finer scale CMB, baryon acoustic oscillation, and Hubble constant measurements, we find that big bang nucleosynthesis is well supported and there is no compelling evidence for a non-standard number of neutrino species ( N eff = 3.84 ± 0.40). The model fit also implies that the age of the universe is t 0 = 13.772 ± 0.059 Gyr, and the fit Hubble constant is H 0 = 69.32 ± 0.80 km s −1 Mpc −1 . Inflation is also supported: the fluctuations are adiabatic, with Gaussian random phases; the detection of a deviation of the scalar spectral index from unity, reported earlier by the WMAP team, now has high statistical significance ( n s = 0.9608 ± 0.0080); and the universe is close to flat/Euclidean ( ). Overall, the WMAP mission has resulted in a reduction of the cosmological parameter volume by a factor of 68,000 for the standard six-parameter ΛCDM model, based on CMB data alone. For a model including tensors, the allowed seven-parameter volume has been reduced by a factor 117,000. Other cosmological observations are in accord with the CMB predictions, and the combined data reduces the cosmological parameter volume even further. With no significant anomalies and an adequate goodness of fit, the inflationary flat ΛCDM model and its precise and accurate parameters rooted in WMAP data stands as the standard model of cosmology.