English

BICEP2 / Keck Array VIII: Measurement of gravitational lensing from large-scale B-mode polarization

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2017-01-11 v2

Abstract

We present measurements of polarization lensing using the 150 GHz maps which include all data taken by the BICEP2 & Keck Array CMB polarization experiments up to and including the 2014 observing season (BK14). Despite their modest angular resolution (0.5\sim 0.5^\circ), the excellent sensitivity (3μ\sim 3\muK-arcmin) of these maps makes it possible to directly reconstruct the lensing potential using only information at larger angular scales (700\ell\leq 700). From the auto-spectrum of the reconstructed potential we measure an amplitude of the spectrum to be ALϕϕ=1.15±0.36A^{\phi\phi}_{\rm L}=1.15\pm 0.36 (Planck Λ\LambdaCDM prediction corresponds to ALϕϕ=1A^{\phi\phi}_{\rm L}=1), and reject the no-lensing hypothesis at 5.8σ\sigma, which is the highest significance achieved to date using an EB lensing estimator. Taking the cross-spectrum of the reconstructed potential with the Planck 2015 lensing map yields ALϕϕ=1.13±0.20A^{\phi\phi}_{\rm L}=1.13\pm 0.20. These direct measurements of ALϕϕA^{\phi\phi}_{\rm L} are consistent with the Λ\LambdaCDM cosmology, and with that derived from the previously reported BK14 B-mode auto-spectrum (ALBB=1.20±0.17A^{\rm BB}_{\rm L}=1.20\pm 0.17). We perform a series of null tests and consistency checks to show that these results are robust against systematics and are insensitive to analysis choices. These results unambiguously demonstrate that the B-modes previously reported by BICEP / Keck at intermediate angular scales (150350150\lesssim\ell\lesssim 350) are dominated by gravitational lensing. The good agreement between the lensing amplitudes obtained from the lensing reconstruction and B-mode spectrum starts to place constraints on any alternative cosmological sources of B-modes at these angular scales.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1606.01968,
  title  = {BICEP2 / Keck Array VIII: Measurement of gravitational lensing from large-scale B-mode polarization},
  author = {The Keck Array and BICEP2 Collaborations and : and P. A. R. Ade and Z. Ahmed and R. W. Aikin and K. D. Alexander and D. Barkats and S. J. Benton and C. A. Bischoff and J. J. Bock and R. Bowens-Rubin and J. A. Brevik and I. Buder and E. Bullock and V. Buza and J. Connors and B. P. Crill and L. Duband and C. Dvorkin and J. P. Filippin and S. Fliescher and J. Grayson and M. Halpern and S. Harrison and S. R. Hildebrandt and G. C. Hilton and H. Hui and K. D. Irwin and J. Kang and K. S. Karkare and E. Karpel and J. P. Kaufman and B. G. Keating and S. Kefeli and S. A. Kernasovskiy and J. M. Kovac and C. L. Kuo and E. M. Leitch and M. Lueker and K. G. Megerian and T. Namikawa and C. B. Netterfield and H. T. Nguyen and R. O'Brient and R. W. Ogburn and A. Orlando and C. Pryke and S. Richter and R. Schwarz and C. D. Sheehy and Z. K. Staniszewski and B. Steinbach and R. V. Sudiwala and G. P. Teply and K. L. Thompson and J. E. Tolan and C. Tucker and A. D. Turner and A. G. Vieregg and A. C. Weber and D. V. Wiebe and J. Willmert and C. L. Wong and W. L. K. Wu and K. W. Yoon},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.01968},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

12 pages, 8 figures