Related papers: Constraining Inflation with the BICEP/Keck CMB Pol…
Searching for the signal of primordial gravitational waves in the B-modes (BB) power spectrum is one of the key scientific aims of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization experiments. However, this could be easily contaminated by…
(abridged for arXiv) We report results from the BICEP2 experiment, a cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarimeter specifically designed to search for the signal of inflationary gravitational waves in the B-mode power spectrum around…
Constraining the Galactic foregrounds with multi-frequency Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observations is an essential step towards ultimately reaching the sensitivity to measure primordial gravitational waves (PGWs), the sign of…
The ability to test and constrain theories of cosmic inflation will advance substantially over the next decade. Key data sources include cosmic microwave background (CMB) measurements and observations of the distribution of matter at…
The BB-mode angular correlation power spectrum of CMB is obtained by considering the primordial gravitational waves in the squeezed vacuum state for various inflationary models and results are compared with the joint analysis of the…
We report on the design and performance of the BICEP2 instrument and on its three-year data set. BICEP2 was designed to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on angular scales of 1 to 5 degrees ($\ell$=40-200),…
We present the implications for cosmic inflation of the Planck measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies in both temperature and polarization based on the full Planck survey. The Planck full mission temperature data…
The recently detected polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) holds the potential for revealing the physics of inflation and gravitationally mapping the large-scale structure of the universe, if so called B-mode signals below…
Measurements of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy have served as the best experimental probe of the early universe to date. The inflationary paradigm, inspired in part by the extreme isotropy of the CMB, is now a cornerstone in…
We present results from an analysis of all data taken by the BICEP2 & Keck Array CMB polarization experiments up to and including the 2014 observing season. This includes the first Keck Array observations at 95 GHz. The maps reach a depth…
A detection of excess cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode polarization on large scales allows the possibility of measuring not only the amplitude of these fluctuations but also their scale dependence, which can be parametrized as the…
We review current observational constraints on the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), with a particular emphasis on detecting the signature of primordial gravitational waves. We present an analytic solution to the…
Measurements of B-mode polarization in the CMB sourced from primordial gravitational waves would provide information on the energy scale of inflation and its potential form. To achieve these goals, one must carefully characterize the…
We present a new and especially powerful signature of cosmic strings and other topological or non-topological defects in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We show that even if defects contribute 1% or less in the…
The curl (B) modes of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization anisotropies are a unique probe of the primordial background of inflationary gravitational waves (IGWs). Unfortunately, the B-mode polarization anisotropies generated by…
The absence of large-angle correlations in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), confirmed by three independent satellite missions, creates significant tension with the standard model of cosmology. Previous work has…
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…
We study how direct detection of the inflationary gravitational wave background constrains inflationary parameters and complements CMB polarization measurements. The error ellipsoids calculated using the Fisher information matrix approach…
A joint analysis of data collected by the Planck and BICEP2+Keck teams has previously given $r = 0.09^{+0.06}_{-0.04}$ for BICEP2 and $r = 0.02^{+0.04}_{-0.02}$ for Keck. Analyzing BICEP2 using its published noise estimate, we had earlier…
The BICEP/Keck Array experiment is a series of small-aperture refracting telescopes observing degree-scale Cosmic Microwave Background polarization from the South Pole in search of a primordial $B$-mode signature. As a pair differencing…