English

BICEP2 / Keck Array x: Constraints on Primordial Gravitational Waves using Planck, WMAP, and New BICEP2/Keck Observations through the 2015 Season

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2018-12-17 v1

Abstract

We present results from an analysis of all data taken by the BICEP2/Keck CMB polarization experiments up to and including the 2015 observing season. This includes the first Keck Array observations at 220 GHz and additional observations at 95 & 150 GHz. The Q/UQ/U maps reach depths of 5.2, 2.9 and 26 μ\muKcmb_{cmb} arcmin at 95, 150 and 220 GHz respectively over an effective area of 400\approx 400 square degrees. The 220 GHz maps achieve a signal-to-noise on polarized dust emission approximately equal to that of Planck at 353 GHz. We take auto- and cross-spectra between these maps and publicly available WMAP and Planck maps at frequencies from 23 to 353 GHz. We evaluate the joint likelihood of the spectra versus a multicomponent model of lensed-Λ\LambdaCDM+rr+dust+synchrotron+noise. The foreground model has seven parameters, and we impose priors on some of these using external information from Planck and WMAP derived from larger regions of sky. The model is shown to be an adequate description of the data at the current noise levels. The likelihood analysis yields the constraint r0.05<0.07r_{0.05}<0.07 at 95% confidence, which tightens to r0.05<0.06r_{0.05}<0.06 in conjunction with Planck temperature measurements and other data. The lensing signal is detected at 8.8σ8.8 \sigma significance. Running maximum likelihood search on simulations we obtain unbiased results and find that σ(r)=0.020\sigma(r)=0.020. These are the strongest constraints to date on primordial gravitational waves.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1810.05216,
  title  = {BICEP2 / Keck Array x: Constraints on Primordial Gravitational Waves using Planck, WMAP, and New BICEP2/Keck Observations through the 2015 Season},
  author = {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 J. Cornelison and B. P. Crill and M. Crumrine and M. Dierickx and L. Duband and C. Dvorkin and J. P. Filippini and S. Fliescher and J. Grayson and G. Hall 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 N. A. Larsen and K. Lau and E. M. Leitch and M. Lueker and K. G. Megerian and L. Moncelsi and T. Namikawa and C. B. Netterfield and H. T. Nguyen and R. O'Brient and R. W. Ogburn and S. Palladino and C. Pryke and B. Racine and S. Richter and A. Schillaci and R. Schwarz and C. D. Sheehy and A. Soliman and T. St. Germaine 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 C. Umilta and A. G. Vieregg and A. Wandui and A. C. Weber and D. V. Wiebe and J. Willmert and C. L. Wong and W. L. K. Wu and H. Yang and K. W. Yoon and C. Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.05216},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

23 pages, 23 figures, as accepted by PRL, data and figures available for download at http://bicepkeck.org/