CLASS Angular Power Spectra and Map-Component Analysis for 40 GHz Observations through 2022
Abstract
Measurement of the largest angular scale () features of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization is a powerful way to constrain the optical depth to reionization and search for the signature of inflation through the detection of primordial -modes. We present an analysis of maps covering 73.6\% of the sky made from the channel of the Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) from 2016 August to 2022 May. Taking advantage of the measurement stability enabled by front-end polarization modulation and excellent conditions from the Atacama Desert, we show this channel achieves higher sensitivity than the analogous frequencies from satellite measurements in the range . Simulations show the CLASS linear (circular) polarization maps have a white noise level of . We measure the Galaxy-masked and spectra of diffuse synchrotron radiation and compare to space-based measurements at similar frequencies. In combination with external data, we expand measurements of the spatial variations of the synchrotron spectral energy density (SED) to include new sky regions and measure the diffuse SED in the harmonic domain. We place a new upper limit on a background of circular polarization in the range with the first bin showing at 95\% confidence. These results establish a new standard for recovery of the largest-scale CMB polarization from the ground and signal exciting possibilities when the higher sensitivity and higher-frequency CLASS channels are included in the analysis.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2309.00675,
title = {CLASS Angular Power Spectra and Map-Component Analysis for 40 GHz Observations through 2022},
author = {Joseph R. Eimer and Yunyang Li and Michael K. Brewer and Rui Shi and Aamir Ali and John W. Appel and Charles L. Bennett and Sarah Marie Bruno and Ricardo Bustos and David T. Chuss and Joseph Cleary and Sumit Dahal and Rahul Datta and Jullianna Denes Couto and Kevin L. Denis and Rolando Dünner and Thomas Essinger-Hileman and Pedro Fluxá and Johannes Hubmayer and Kathleen Harrington and Jeffrey Iuliano and John Karakla and Tobias A. Marriage and Carolina Núñez and Lucas Parker and Matthew A. Petroff and Rodrigo A. Reeves and Karwan Rostem and Deniz A. N. Valle and Duncan J. Watts and Janet L. Weiland and Edward J. Wollack and Zhilei Xu and Lingzhen Zeng},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.00675},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
38 pages, 25 figures, 6 tables. Accepted to The Astrophysical Journal