Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Dvorkin, C..
Here, we present results from an analysis of all data taken by the bicep2/Keck CMB polarization experiments up to and including the 2015 observing season. This includes the first Keck Array observations at 220 GHz and additional observations at 95 and 150 GHz.
Future observations of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarisation have the potential to answer some of the most fundamental questions of modern physics and cosmology, including: what physical process gave birth to the Universe we see today? What are the dark matter and dark energy that seem to constitute 95% of the energy density of the Universe? Do we need extensions to the standard model of particle physics and fundamental interactions? Is the ΛCDM cosmological scenario correct, or are we missing an essential piece of the puzzle? In this paper, we list the requirements for a future CMB polarisation survey addressing these scientific objectives, and discuss the design drivers of the COREmfive space mission proposed to ESA in answer to the "M5" call for a medium-sized mission. The rationale and options, and the methodologies used to assess the mission's performance, are of interest to other future CMB mission design studies. COREmfive has 19 frequency channels, distributed over a broad frequency range, spanning the 60–600 GHz interval, to control astrophysical foreground emission. The angular resolution ranges from 2' to 18', and the aggregate CMB sensitivity is about 2 μK∙arcmin. The observations are made with a single integrated focal-plane instrument, consisting of an array of 2100 cryogenically-cooled, linearly-polarised detectors at the focus of a 1.2-m aperture cross-Dragone telescope. The mission is designed to minimise all sources of systematic effects, which must be controlled so that no more than 10 -4 of the intensity leaks into polarisation maps, and no more than about 1% of E-type polarisation leaks into B-type modes. COREmfive observes the sky from a large Lissajous orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point on an orbit that offers stable observing conditions and avoids contamination from sidelobe pick-up of stray radiation originating from the Sun, Earth, and Moon. The entire sky is observed repeatedly during four years of continuous scanning, with a combination of three rotations of the spacecraft over different timescales. With about 50% of the sky covered every few days, this scan strategy provides the mitigation of systematic effects and the internal redundancy that are needed to convincingly extract the primordial B-mode signal on large angular scales, and check with adequate sensitivity the consistency of the observations in several independent data subsets. COREmfive is designed as a "near-ultimate" CMB polarisation mission which, for optimal complementarity with ground-based observations, will perform the observations that are known to be essential to CMB polarisation science and cannot be obtained by any other means than a dedicated space mission. It will provide well-characterised, highly-redundant multi-frequency observations of polarisation at all the scales where foreground emission and cosmic variance dominate the final uncertainty for obtaining precision CMB science, as well as 2' angular resolution maps of high-frequency foreground emission in the 300–600 GHz frequency range, essential for complementarity with future ground-based observations with large telescopes that can observe the CMB with the same beamsize.
Here we present the strongest constraints to date on anisotropies of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization rotation derived from 150 GHz data taken by the BICEP2 & Keck Array CMB experiments up to and including the 2014 observing season (BK14). The definition of the polarization angle in BK14 maps has gone through self-calibration in which the overall angle is adjusted to minimize the observed TB and EB power spectra. After this procedure, the Q U maps lose sensitivity to a uniform polarization rotation but are still sensitive to anisotropies of polarization rotation. This analysis places constraints on the anisotropies of polarization rotation, which could be generated by CMB photons interacting with axionlike pseudoscalar fields or Faraday rotation induced by primordial magnetic fields. The sensitivity of BK14 maps (~3 μK - arc min) makes it possible to reconstruct anisotropies of the polarization rotation angle and measure their angular power spectrum much more precisely than previous attempts. Our data are found to be consistent with no polarization rotation anisotropies, improving the upper bound on the amplitude of the rotation angle spectrum by roughly an order of magnitude compared to the previous best constraints. Our results lead to an order of magnitude better constraint on the coupling constant of the Chern-Simons electromagnetic term g aγ ≤ 7.2 × 10 -2 /H I (95% confidence) than the constraint derived from the B -mode spectrum, where H I is the inflationary Hubble scale. This constraint leads to a limit on the decay constant of 10 -6 ≲ f a / M pl at mass range of 10 -33 ≤ m a ≤ 10 -28 eV for r = 0.01 , assuming g aγ ~ α / (2πf a ) with α denoting the fine structure constant. The upper bound on the amplitude of the primordial magnetic fields is 30 nG (95% confidence) from the polarization rotation anisotropies.
The Keck Array is a system of cosmic microwave background polarimeters, each similar to the Bicep2 experiment. In this paper we report results from the 2012 to 2013 observing seasons, during which the Keck Array consisted of five receivers all operating in the same (150 GHz) frequency band and observing field as Bicep2. We again find an excess of B-mode power over the lensed-ΛCDM expectation of >5σ in the range 30 < ℓ < 150 and confirm that this is not due to systematics using jackknife tests and simulations based on detailed calibration measurements. In map difference and spectral difference tests these new data are shown to be consistent with Bicep2. Finally, we combine the maps from the two experiments to produce final Q and U maps which have a depth of 57 nK deg (3.4 μK arcmin) over an effective area of 400 deg{sup 2} for an equivalent survey weight of 250,000 μK{sup −2}. The final BB band powers have noise uncertainty a factor of 2.3 times better than the previous results, and a significance of detection of excess power of >6σ.
Here, we report the results of a joint analysis of data from BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck . BICEP2 and Keck Array have observed the same approximately 400 deg 2 patch of sky centered on RA 0 h, Dec. -57.5°. The combined maps reach a depth of 57 nK deg in Stokes Q and U in a band centered at 150 GHz. Planck has observed the full sky in polarization at seven frequencies from 30 to 353 GHz, but much less deeply in any given region (1.2 μK deg in Q and U at 143 GHz). We detect 150×353 cross-correlation in B modes at high significance. We fit the single- and cross-frequency power spectra at frequencies ≥150 GHz to a lensed-ΛCDM model that includes dust and a possible contribution from inflationary gravitational waves (as parametrized by the tensor-to-scalar ratio r), using a prior on the frequency spectral behavior of polarized dust emission from previous Planck analysis of other regions of the sky. We find strong evidence for dust and no statistically significant evidence for tensor modes. We probe various model variations and extensions, including adding a synchrotron component in combination with lower frequency data, and find that these make little difference to the r constraint. Finally, we present an alternative analysis which is similar to a map-based cleaning of the dust contribution, and show that this gives similar constraints. Lastly,l the final result is expressed as a likelihood curve for r, and yields an upper limit r 0.05 < 0.12 at 95% confidence. Marginalizing over dust and r, lensing B modes are detected at 7.0σ significance.
In this follow-up work to the high energy physics Community Summer Study 2013 (aka SNOWMASS), we explore the scientific capabilities of a future Stage IV cosmic microwave background polarization experiment under various assumptions on detector count, resolution, and sky coverage. We use the Fisher matrix technique to calculate the expected uncertainties of cosmological parameters in νΛCDM that are especially relevant to the physics of fundamental interactions, including neutrino masses, effective number of relativistic species, dark energy equation of state, dark matter annihilation, and inflationary parameters. To further chart the landscape of future cosmology probes, we include forecasted results from the baryon acoustic oscillation signal as measured by Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument to constrain parameters that would benefit from low redshift information. We find the following best 1σ constraints: σ(M {sub ν}) = 15 meV, σ(N {sub eff}) = 0.0156, dark energy figure of merit = 303, σ(p {sub ann}) = 0.00588 × 3 × 10{sup –26} cm{sup 3} s{sup –1} GeV{sup –1}, σ(Ω {sub K}) = 0.00074, σ(n{sub s} ) = 0.00110, σ(α {sub s}) = 0.00145, and σ(r) = 0.00009. We also detail the dependencies of the parameter constraints on detector count, resolution, and sky coverage.
In this follow-up work to the High Energy Physics Community Summer Study 2013 (HEP CSS 2013, a.k.a. Snowmass), we explore the scientific capabilities of a future Stage-IV Cosmic Microwave Background polarization experiment (CMB-S4) under various assumptions on detector count, resolution, and sky coverage. We use the Fisher matrix technique to calculate the expected uncertainties in cosmological parameters in vΛCDM that are especially relevant to the physics of fundamental interactions, including neutrino masses, effective number of relativistic species, dark-energy equation of state, dark-matter annihilation, and inflationary parameters. To further chart the landscape of future cosmology probes, we include forecasted results from the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) signal as measured by DESI to constrain parameters that would benefit from low redshift information. We find the following best 1-σ constraints: σ(M v ) = 15 meV, σ(N eff ) = 0.0156, Dark energy Figure of Merit = 303, σ(p ann ) = 0.00588 x 3 x 10 -26 cm 3 /s/GeV, σ( Ω K ) = 0.00074, σ(n s ) = 0.00110, σ( α s ) = 0.00145, and σ(r) = 0.00009. We also detail the dependences of the parameter constraints on detector count, resolution, and sky coverage.