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 of SPIDER, an experiment designed to map the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on degree angular scales. 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 the SPIDER bands. We employ two independent foreground-removal techniques in order to explore the sensitivity of the cosmological result to the assumptions made by each. The primary method uses a dust template derived from Planck data to subtract the Galactic dust signal. A second approach, employing a joint analysis of SPIDER and Planck data 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 and parameter space, we derive 95% upper limits on the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio from Feldman-Cousins and Bayesian constructions, finding and , respectively. Roughly half the uncertainty in derives from noise associated with the template subtraction. New data at 280 GHz from SPIDER's second flight will complement the Planck polarization maps, providing powerful measurements of the polarized Galactic dust emission.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2103.13334,
title = {A Constraint on Primordial $B$-Modes from the First Flight of the SPIDER Balloon-Borne Telescope},
author = {SPIDER Collaboration and P. A. R. Ade and M. Amiri and S. J. Benton and A. S. Bergman and R. Bihary and J. J. Bock and J. R. Bond and J. A. Bonetti and S. A. Bryan and H. C. Chiang and C. R. Contaldi and O. Doré and A. J. Duivenvoorden and H. K. Eriksen and M. Farhang and J. P. Filippini and A. A. Fraisse and K. Freese and M. Galloway and A. E. Gambrel and N. N. Gandilo and K. Ganga and R. Gualtieri and J. E. Gudmundsson and M. Halpern and J. Hartley and M. Hasselfield and G. Hilton and W. Holmes and V. V. Hristov and Z. Huang and K. D. Irwin and W. C. Jones and A. Karakci and C. L. Kuo and Z. D. Kermish and J. S. -Y. Leung and S. Li and D. S. Y. Mak and P. V. Mason and K. Megerian and L. Moncelsi and T. A. Morford and J. M. Nagy and C. B. Netterfield and M. Nolta and R. O'Brient and B. Osherson and I. L. Padilla and B. Racine and A. S. Rahlin and C. Reintsema and J. E. Ruhl and M. C. Runyan and T. M. Ruud and J. A. Shariff and E. C. Shaw and C. Shiu and J. D. Soler and X. Song and A. Trangsrud and C. Tucker and R. S. Tucker and A. D. Turner and J. F. van der List and A. C. Weber and I. K. Wehus and S. Wen and D. V. Wiebe and E. Y. Young},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.13334},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
29 pages, 13 figures