EXTRAGALACTIC POINT SOURCE SEARCH IN FIVE-YEAR WMAP 41, 61, AND 94 GHz MAPS

We present the results of an extragalactic point source search using the five-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) 41, 61, and 94 GHz (Q, V, and W bands) temperature maps. This work is an extension of our designing and applying a cosmic microwave background (CMB)-free technique to extract point sources in the WMAP maps. Specifically, we have formed an internal linear combination map of the three-band maps, with the weights chosen to remove the CMB anisotropy signal as well as to favor the selection of flat-spectrum sources. We have also constructed a filter to recover the true point source flux distribution on the sky. A total of 381 sources are found in our study at the >5σ level outside the WMAP point source detection mask, among which 89 are new (i.e., not present in the WMAP catalogs). Source fluxes have been calculated and corrected for the Eddington bias. We have solidly identified 367 (96.3%) of our sources, the 1σ positional uncertainty of which is 2'. The 14 unidentified sources could be either extended radio structure or obscured by Galactic emission. We have also applied the same detection approach to simulated maps, which yielded 364 ± 21 detections on average. The recovered source distribution N(>S) agrees well with the simulation input, which proves the reliability of this method.