Related papers: The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Calibration with …
Improved polarization measurements at frequencies below 70 GHz with degree-level angular resolution are crucial for advancing our understanding of the Galactic synchrotron radiation and the potential polarized anomalous microwave emission…
We present a cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing map produced from a linear combination of South Pole Telescope (SPT) and \emph{Planck} temperature data. The 150 GHz temperature data from the $2500\ {\rm deg}^{2}$ SPT-SZ survey is…
Aims: To propose a method for the polarimetric calibration of large astronomical mirrors that does not require use of special optical devices nor knowledge of the exact polarization properties of the calibration target. Methods: We study…
We review the systematic uncertainties that have plagued attempts to obtain high precision and high accuracy from ground-based photometric measurements using CCDs. We identify two main challenges in breaking through the 1% precision…
Mass calibration uncertainty is the largest systematic effect for using clusters of galaxies to constrain cosmological parameters. We present weak lensing mass measurements from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Stripe 82 Survey for galaxy…
We report on the absolute calibration of a CCD camera by exploiting quantum correlation. This novel method exploits a certain number of spatial pairwise quantum correlated modes produced by spontaneous parametric-down-conversion. We develop…
We revisit the anisotropic universe model previously developed by Ackerman, Carroll and Wise (ACW), and generalize both the theoretical and computational framework to include polarization and various forms of systematic effects. We apply…
Recent advances in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology have made UAVs an attractive possibility as an airborne calibration platform for astronomical facilities. This is especially true for arrays of telescopes spread over a large area…
Multichroic polarization sensitive detectors enable increased sensitivity and spectral coverage for observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). An array optimized for dual frequency detectors can provide 1.7 times gain in…
On large angular scales (greater than about 60 degrees), the two-point angular correlation function of the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), as measured (outside of the plane of the Galaxy) by the Wilkinson Microwave…
Phase fluctuations introduced by the atmosphere are the main limiting factor in attaining diffraction limited performance in extended interferometric arrays at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. We report the results of C-PACS, the…
(Abridged) Despite the great success of precision cosmology, cosmologists cannot fully explain the initial conditions of the Universe. Inflation, an exponential expansion in the first 10^-36s, is a promising potential explanation. A generic…
Recent analyses of the WMAP data have suggested that the low-order multipoles of the CMB anisotropy distribution show cosmologically interesting and unexpected morphologies and amplitudes. In this paper, we apply a power equalization (PE)…
The high electron temperature in galaxy clusters ($>1\,$keV or $>10^7\,$K) leads to corrections at the level of a few percent in their thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect signatures. Both the size and frequency dependence of these corrections,…
We have developed a fast, accurate and generally applicable method for inferring the power spectrum and its uncertainties from maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in the presence of inhomogeneous and correlated noise. For maps…
It has been argued recently by Copi etal (2009) that the lack of large angular correlations of the CMB temperature field provides strong evidence against the standard, statistically isotropic, inflationary LambdaCDM cosmology. We compare…
In preparation for James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a set of cross calibration programs with HST and Spitzer for suitable primary photometric standards and astrometric fields were developed. NICMOS/HST and IRAC/Spitzer photometry…
We present a careful frequentist analysis of one- and two-point statistics of the hot and cold spots in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data obtained by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). Our main result is the detection…
Anomalies in the large-scale CMB temperature sky measured by WMAP have been suggested as possible evidence for a violation of statistical isotropy on large scales. In any physical model for broken isotropy, there are testable consequences…
Observations show that the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) contains tiny variations at the 10^{-5} level around its black-body equilibrium temperature. The detection of these temperature fluctuations provides to modern Cosmology evidence…