Related papers: BICEP2 / Keck Array XI: Beam Characterization and …
Recent microwave polarization measurements from the BICEP2 experiment may reveal a long-sought signature of inflation. However, these new results appear inconsistent with the best-fit model from the Planck satellite. We suggest a…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is a fundamental observational tool in modern cosmology. The linear polarization of the CMB provides a crucial observational tool for exploring new physics, including the inflationary paradigm and…
I briefly review some of the most common map-making strategies for experiments targeting the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), in light of the anticipated volumes of data collected by next generation observatories such…
The statistical expectation values of the temperature fluctuations and polarization of cosmic microwave background (CMB) are assumed to be preserved under rotations of the sky. We investigate the statistical isotropy (SI) of the CMB maps…
Recent measurements of the temperature field of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) provide tantalising evidence for violation of Statistical Isotropy (SI) that constitutes a fundamental tenet of contemporary cosmology. CMB space based…
We present a CMB large-scale polarization dataset obtained by combining WMAP Ka, Q and V with Planck 70 GHz maps. We employ the legacy frequency maps released by the WMAP and Planck collaborations and perform our own Galactic foreground…
The PLANCK satellite mission has been launched the 14th of May 2009 and is dedicated to the measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in temperature and polarization. The presence of diffuse galactic polarized emission…
We present a new model of the microwave sky in polarization that can be used to simulate data from CMB polarization experiments. We exploit the most recent results from the Planck satellite to provide an accurate description of the diffuse…
A key goal of many Cosmic Microwave Background experiments is the detection of gravitational waves, through their B-mode polarization signal at large scales. To extract such a signal requires modelling contamination from the Galaxy. Using…
CMB polarization provides a unique window into cosmological inflation; the amplitude of the B-mode polarization from last scattering is uniquely sensitive to the energetics of inflation. However, numerous systematic effects arising from…
We investigate the implications for inflation of the detection of B-modes polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) by BICEP2. We show that the hypothesis of primordial origin of the measurement is only favored by the first four…
Using Planck polarization data, we search for and constrain spatial variations of the polarized dust foreground for cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations, specifically in its spectral index, $\beta_d$. Failure to account for such…
The lensing power spectrum from cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps will be measured with unprecedented precision with upcoming experiments, including upgrades to ACT and SPT. Achieving significant improvements in…
We present a measurement of the gravitational lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature and polarization fields obtained by cross-correlating the reconstructed convergence signal from the first season of ACTPol data at…
The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) is an invaluable probe of the conditions of the early universe. Recent measurements of its spatial anisotropy have allowed accurate determinations of several fundamental cosmological…
We test the statistical isotropy and Gaussianity of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies using observations made by the Planck satellite. Our results are based mainly on the full Planck mission for temperature, but also…
We use a simple model to investigate the effect of polarized Galactic foreground emission on the ability of planned CMB missions to detect and model CMB polarization. Emission from likely polarized sources (synchrotron and spinning dust)…
We have updated our analysis of the 9-year WMAP data using the collection of polarization maps looking for the presence of additional evidence for a finite 'cosmic ray foreground' for the CMB. We have given special attention to high…
Full-sky CMB maps from the 2015 Planck release allow us to detect departures from global isotropy on the largest scales. We present the first searches using CMB polarization for correlations induced by a non-trivial topology with a…
The characterization of the Galactic foregrounds has been shown to be the main obstacle in the challenging quest to detect primordial B-modes in the polarized microwave sky. We make use of the Planck-HFI 2015 data release at high…