A Constraint on Primordial B-modes from the First Flight of the Spider Balloon-borne Telescope
Abstract

We present the first linear polarization measurements from the 2015 long-duration balloon flight ofSpider, which is an experiment that is designed to map the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on degree angular scales. The results from these measurements include maps and angular power spectra from observations of 4.8% of the sky at 95 and 150 GHz, along with the results of internal consistency tests on these data. While the polarized CMB anisotropy from primordial density perturbations is the dominant signal in this region of sky, Galactic dust emission is also detected with high significance. Galactic synchrotron emission is found to be negligible in theSpiderbands. We employ two independent foreground-removal techniques to explore the sensitivity of the cosmological result to the assumptions made by each. The primary method uses a dust template derived fromPlanckdata to subtract the Galactic dust signal. A second approach, which constitutes a joint analysis ofSpiderandPlanckdata in the harmonic domain, assumes a modified-blackbody model for the spectral energy distribution of the dust with no constraint on its spatial morphology. Using a likelihood that jointly samples the template amplitude andrparameter space, we derive 95% upper limits on the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio from Feldman–Cousins and Bayesian constructions, more »

Authors:
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Publication Date:
NSF-PAR ID:
10363909
Journal Name:
The Astrophysical Journal
Volume:
927
Issue:
2
Page Range or eLocation-ID:
Article No. 174
ISSN:
0004-637X
Publisher:
DOI PREFIX: 10.3847
National Science Foundation
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2. Abstract

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3. ABSTRACT

In order to better analyse the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which is dominated by emission from our Galaxy, we need tools that can detect residual foregrounds in cleaned CMB maps. Galactic foregrounds introduce statistical anisotropy and directionality to the polarization pseudo-vectors of the CMB, which can be investigated by using the $\mathcal {D}$ statistic of Bunn and Scott. This statistic is rapidly computable and capable of investigating a broad range of data products for directionality. We demonstrate the application of this statistic to detecting foregrounds in polarization maps by analysing the uncleaned Planck 2018 frequency maps. For the Planck 2018 CMB maps, we find no evidence for residual foreground contamination. In order to examine the sensitivity of the $\mathcal {D}$ statistic, we add a varying fraction of the polarized thermal dust and synchrotron foreground maps to the CMB maps and show the per cent-level foreground contamination that would be detected with 95 per cent confidence. We also demonstrate application of the $\mathcal {D}$ statistic to another data product by analysing the gradient of the minimum-variance CMB lensing potential map (i.e. the deflection angle) for directionality. We find no excess directionality in the lensing potential map when compared to the simulationsmore »

4. Abstract

Modern cosmic microwave background (CMB) analysis pipelines regularly employ complex time-domain filters, beam models, masking, and other techniques during the production of sky maps and their corresponding angular power spectra. However, these processes can generate couplings between multipoles from the same spectrum and from different spectra, in addition to the typical power attenuation. Within the context of pseudo-Cbased,MASTER-style analyses, the net effect of the time-domain filtering is commonly approximated by a multiplicative transfer function,F, that can fail to capture mode mixing and is dependent on the spectrum of the signal. To address these shortcomings, we have developed a simulation-based spectral correction approach that constructs a two-dimensional transfer matrix,$Jℓℓ′$, which contains information about mode mixing in addition to mode attenuation. We demonstrate the application of this approach on data from the first flight of theSpiderballoon-borne CMB experiment.

5. Abstract

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