Cosmic microwave background alignment in multi-connected universes

The low multipoles of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy possess some strange properties such as the alignment of the quadrupole and the octopole, and the extreme planarity or the extreme sphericity of some multipoles. In this paper, the CMB anisotropy of several multi-connected space forms is investigated with respect to the maximal angular momentum dispersion and the Maxwellian multipole vectors in order to settle the question of whether such spaces can explain the low multipole anomalies in the CMB. The following spaces are considered: the Picard topology in hyperbolic space, three spherical spaces (Poincare dodecahedron, binary tetrahedron and binary octahedron) and a hypertorus in flat space. Although these spaces are able to produce the large-scale suppression of the CMB anisotropy, they do not describe the CMB alignment. From the models considered, the Picard universe shows the strongest alignment properties.