CMB Maximum Temperature Asymmetry Axis: Alignment with Other Cosmic
  Asymmetries
  We use a global pixel based estimator to identify the axis of the residual
Maximum Temperature Asymmetry (MTA) (after the dipole subtraction) of the WMAP
7 year Internal Linear Combination (ILC) CMB temperature sky map. The estimator
is based on considering the temperature differences between opposite pixels in
the sky at various angular resolutions (4 degrees-15 degrees and selecting the
axis that maximizes this difference. We consider three large scale Healpix
resolutions (N_{side}=16 (3.7 degrees), N_{side}=8 (7.3 degrees) and N_{side}=4
(14.7 degrees)). We compare the direction and magnitude of this asymmetry with
three other cosmic asymmetry axes (\alpha dipole, Dark Energy Dipole and Dark
Flow) and find that the four asymmetry axes are abnormally close to each other.
We compare the observed MTA axis with the corresponding MTA axes of 10^4
Gaussian isotropic simulated ILC maps (based on LCDM). The fraction of
simulated ILC maps that reproduces the observed magnitude of the MTA asymmetry
and alignment with the observed \alpha dipole is in the range of 0.1%-0.5%$
(depending on the resolution chosen for the CMB map). The corresponding
magnitude+alignment probabilities with the other two asymmetry axes (Dark
Energy Dipole and Dark Flow) are at the level of about 1%. We propose Extended
Topological Quintessence as a physical model qualitatively consistent with this
coincidence of directions.
