IS A HARRISON-ZELDOVICH POWER SPECTRUM COMPATIBLE WITH THE TENERIFE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND EXPERIMENT

We analyze whether the large variance of the temperature held measured by the Tenerife experiment can be obtained by sampling an active regi on of a cosmic microwave sky characterized by a matter power spectrum with slope n = 1. We employ the technique of constrained realizations of Gaussian random fields to generate sky maps, smoothed to COBE Diffe rential Microwave Radiometer scales, containing a hot spot at a prespe cified location. We show that when Tenerife is normalized to Q(rms-PS) = 20 mu K, the high variance can be explained at the 68% confidence l evel as originating from a 2.5 sigma or larger deviation from a scale- invariant power spectrum.