Is the Radio Source Dipole from NVSS Consistent with the CMB and ΛCDM?

The dipole moment in the angular distribution of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is thought to originate from the Doppler effect and our motion relative to the CMB frame. Observations of large-scale structure (LSS) should show a related “kinematic dipole” and help test the kinematic origin of the CMB dipole. Intriguingly, many previous LSS dipole studies suggest discrepancies with the expectations from the CMB. Here we reassess the apparent inconsistency between the CMB measurements and dipole estimates from the NVSS catalog of radio sources. We find that it is important to account for the shot noise and clustering of the NVSS sources, as well as kinematic contributions, in determining the expected dipole signal. We use the clustering redshift method and a cross-matching technique to refine estimates of the clustering term. We then derive a probability distribution for the expected NVSS dipole in a standard ΛCDM cosmological model including all (i.e., kinematic, shot-noise and clustering) dipole components. Our model agrees with most of the previous NVSS dipole measurements in the literature at better than ≲ 2σ. We conclude that the NVSS dipole is consistent with a kinematic origin for the CMB dipole within ΛCDM.