Related papers: A Polarization Pursuers' Guide
Accurate measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies with an angular resolution of a few arcminutes can be used to determine fundamental cosmological parameters such as the densities of baryons, cold and hot dark…
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…
Polarized Galactic foregrounds are one of the primary sources of systematic error in measurements of the B-mode polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Experiments are becoming increasingly sensitive to complexities in the…
The DASI discovery of CMB polarization has opened a new chapter in cosmology. Most of the useful information about inflationary gravitational waves and reionization is on large angular scales where Galactic foreground contamination is the…
A B-mode polarization signal in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is widely regarded as smoking gun evidence for gravitational waves produced during inflation. Here, we demonstrate that tensor perturbations sourced during…
We study the signal in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization anisotropy resulting from patchy reionization. It is well known that the primordial polarization of the CMB is very sensitive to the details of reionization.…
One of the main challenges facing upcoming CMB experiments will be to distinguish the cosmological signal from foreground contamination. We present a comprehensive treatment of this problem and study how foregrounds degrade the accuracy…
We report an improved measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) $B$-mode polarization power spectrum with the POLARBEAR experiment at 150 GHz. By adding new data collected during the second season of observations (2013-2014) to…
Probing primordial curvature perturbations on small scales, beyond those accessible using cosmic microwave background (CMB) primary anisotropies and Lyman-$\alpha$ forest data, remains a major open challenge. Current constraints on the…
We revisit the classification of polarization observables of the cosmic microwave background. There exists a unified approach to the $3 \times 3$ density matrix by which intensity, linear and circular polarization are treated on an equal…
We present a method to simulate the polarization properties of extragalactic radio sources at microwave frequencies. Polarization measurements of nearly 2x10^6 sources at 1.4 GHz are provided by the NVSS survey. Using this catalogue and the…
Gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization field has been recognized as a potentially valuable probe of the cosmological density field. We apply likelihood-based techniques to the problem of lensing of CMB…
We examine the potential of polarization bispectra of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to constrain primordial magnetic fields (PMFs). We compute all possible bispectra between temperature and polarization anisotropies sourced by PMFs…
Using the formalism of spin-weighted functions we present an all-sky analysis of polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Linear polarization is a second-rank symmetric and traceless tensor, which can be decomposed on a sphere…
Measurements of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies constrain isocurvature fluctuations between photons and non-relativistic particles to be sub-dominant to adiabatic fluctuations. Perturbations in the relative number densities…
One of the primary scientific targets of current and future CMB polarization experiments is the search for a stochastic background of gravity waves in the early universe. As instrumental sensitivity improves, the limiting factor will…
The full sky cosmic microwave background polarization field can be decomposed into 'electric' and 'magnetic' components. Working in harmonic space we construct window functions that allow clean separation of the electric and magnetic modes…
Circular polarization in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) offers a promising probe of the parity-violating physics of the early universe. In this paper, we propose a novel method to constrain the primordial circular polarization of…
The BICEP3 CMB Polarimeter is a small-aperture refracting telescope located at the South Pole and is specifically designed to search for the possible signature of inflationary gravitational waves in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).…
When a cosmic microwave background (CMB) photon travels from the surface of last scatter through spacetime metric perturbations, the polarization vector may rotate about its direction of propagation. This gravitational rotation is distinct…