English

Polarization observations in a low synchrotron emission field at 1.4 GHz

Astrophysics 2009-11-10 v1

Abstract

We present the first observation of the diffuse polarized synchrotron radiation of a patch (3×3\sim 3^\circ \times 3^\circ) in the BOOMERanG field, one of the areas with the lowest CMB foreground emission. The work has been carried out with the Australia Telescope Compact Array at 1.4 GHz with 3.4 arcmin resolution and sensitivity of 0.18\sim 0.18 mJy beam1^{-1}. The mean polarized signal has been found to be Prms=(Qrms2+Urms2)=11.6±0.6P_{rms} = \sqrt{(Q_{rms}^2 + U_{rms}^2)} = 11.6 \pm 0.6 mK, nearly one order of magnitude below than in the Galactic Plane. Extrapolations to frequencies of interest for cosmological investigations suggest that polarized synchrotron foreground noise should allow the detection of the CMB Polarization EE--mode already at 32 GHz and make us confident that, at 90 GHz, it is accessible with no relevant foreground contamination. Last but not least, even the BB--mode detection for T/S>0.01T/S > 0.01 is not ruled out in such a low emission patch.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0307363,
  title  = {Polarization observations in a low synchrotron emission field at 1.4 GHz},
  author = {G. Bernardi and E. Carretti and S. Cortiglioni and R. J. Sault and M. J. Kesteven and S. Poppi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0307363},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

Uses emulateapj.sty, onecolfloat.sty, 5 pages 4 fig., accepted for publication in ApJL