A Measurement of the Degree-scale CMB B-mode Angular Power Spectrum with Polarbear
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Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Feng, C..
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Here, we present a measurement of the gravitational lensing deflection power spectrum reconstructed with two seasons of cosmic microwave background polarization data from the Polarbear experiment. Observations were taken at 150 GHz from 2012 to 2014 and surveyed three patches of sky totaling 30 square degrees. We test the consistency of the lensing spectrum with a cold dark matter cosmology and reject the no-lensing hypothesis at a confidence of 10.9σ, including statistical and systematic uncertainties. We observe a value of A L = 1.33 ± 0.32 (statistical) ±0.02 (systematic) ±0.07 (foreground) using all polarization lensing estimators, which corresponds to a 24% accurate measurement of the lensing amplitude. Compared to the analysis of the first-year data, we have improved the breadth of both the suite of null tests and the error terms included in the estimation of systematic contamination.
Using only cosmic microwave background polarization data from the polarbear experiment, we measure B-mode polarization delensing on subdegree scales at more than 5σ significance. We achieve a 14% B-mode power variance reduction, the highest to date for internal delensing, and improve this result to 22% by applying for the first time an iterative maximum a posteriori delensing method. Our analysis demonstrates the capability of internal delensing as a means of improving constraints on inflationary models, paving the way for the optimal analysis of next-generation primordial B-mode experiments.
The PandaX-III experiment plans to search for neutrinoless double beta decay (0ν ββ ) of 136 Xe in the China JinPing underground Laboratory (CJPL). The experiment will use a high pressure gaseous time projection chamber (TPC) to register both the energy and the electron track topology of an event. This article is devoted to demonstrate our particular detector setup capabilities for the identification of 0ν ββ and the consequent background reduction. As software tool we use REST, a framework developed for the reconstruction and simulation of TPC-based detector systems. We study the potential for background reduction by introducing appropriate parameters based on the properties of 0ν ββ events. We exploit for the first time not only the energy density of the electron track-ends, but also the electron scattering angles produced by an electron near the end of its trajectory. To implement this, we have added new algorithms for detector signal and track processing inside REST. Their assessment shows that background can be reduced by about 7 orders of magnitude while keeping 0ν ββ efficiency above 20% for the PandaX-III baseline readout scheme, a two-dimensional 3 mm pitch stripped readout. More generally, we use the potential of REST to handle 2D/3D data to assess the impact on signal-to-background significance at different detector granularities, and to validate the PandaX-III baseline choice. Finally, we demonstrate the additional potential to discriminate surface background events generated at the readout plane in the absence of to, by making use of event parameters related with the diffusion of electrons.
Herein we report a 4.8σ measurement of the cross-correlation signal between the cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing convergence reconstructed from measurements of the CMB polarization made by the P OLARBEAR experiment and the infrared-selected galaxies of the $Herschel$-ATLAS survey. This is the first measurement of its kind. We infer a best-fit galaxy bias of $b$ = 5.76 ± 1.25, corresponding to a host halo mass of log 10 (M h /M ⊙ ). =13.5$^{+0.2}_{-0.3}$ at an effective redshift of $z$ ~ 2 from the cross-correlation power spectrum. Residual uncertainties in the redshift distribution of the submillimeter galaxies are subdominant with respect to the statistical precision. We perform a suite of systematic tests, finding that instrumental and astrophysical contaminations are small compared to the statistical error. This cross-correlation measurement only relies on CMB polarization information that, differently from CMB temperature maps, is less contaminated by galactic and extragalactic foregrounds, providing a clearer view of the projected matter distribution. This result demonstrates the feasibility and robustness of this approach for future high-sensitivity CMB polarization experiments.
Here, we report the first detection of gravitational lensing due to galaxy clusters using only the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The lensing signal is obtained using a new estimator that extracts the lensing dipole signature from stacked images formed by rotating the cluster-centered Stokes QU map cutouts along the direction of the locally measured background CMB polarization gradient. Using data from the SPTpol 500 deg 2 survey at the locations of roughly 18 000 clusters with richness λ ≥ 10 from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Year-3 full galaxy cluster catalog, we detect lensing at 4.8σ. The mean stacked mass of the selected sample is found to be (1.43 ± 0.40) × 10 14 M ⊙ which is in good agreement with optical weak lensing based estimates using DES data and CMB-lensing based estimates using SPTpol temperature data. This measurement is a key first step for cluster cosmology with future low-noise CMB surveys, like CMB-S4, for which CMB polarization will be the primary channel for cluster lensing measurements.
In this work, we study the polarization properties of extragalactic sources at 95 and 150 GHz in the SPTpol 500 deg 2 survey. We estimate the polarized power by stacking maps at known source positions, and correct for noise bias by subtracting the mean polarized power at random positions in the maps. We show that the method is unbiased using a set of simulated maps with similar noise properties to the real SPTpol maps. We find a flux-weighted mean-squared polarization fraction $\langle$p 2 $\rangle$ = [8.9 ± 1.1] × 10 -4 at 95 GHz and [6.9 ± 1.1] × 10 -4 at 150 GHz for the full sample. This is consistent with the values obtained for a subsample of active galactic nuclei. For dusty sources, we find 95 percent upper limits of $\langle$p 2 $\rangle$ 95 < 16.9 × 10 -3 and $\langle$p 2 $\rangle$ 150 < 2.6 × 10 -3 . We find no evidence that the polarization fraction depends on the source flux or observing frequency. The 1σ upper limit on measured mean-squared polarization fraction at 150 GHz implies that extragalactic foregrounds will be subdominant to the CMB E and B mode polarization power spectra out to at least ℓ ≲ 5700 (ℓ ≲ 4700) and ℓ ≲ 5300 (ℓ ≲ 3600), respectively, at 95 (150) GHz.
In this work, we introduce the first measurement of cross-correlation between the lensing potential, reconstructed from cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization data, and the cosmic shear field from galaxy shapes. This measurement is made using data from the P OLARBEAR CMB experiment and the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey. By analyzing an 11 deg 2 overlapping region, we reject the null hypothesis at 3.5σ and constrain the amplitude of the cross-spectrum to $\widehat{A}$ lens = 1.70 ± 0.48, where $\widehat{A}$ lens is the amplitude normalized with respect to the Planck 2018 prediction, based on the flat Λ cold dark matter cosmology. The first measurement of this cross-spectrum without relying on CMB temperature measurements is possible owing to the deep P OLARBEAR map with a noise level of ~6 μK arcmin, as well as the deep HSC data with a high galaxy number density of n g = 23 arcmin -2 . We present a detailed study of the systematics budget to show that residual systematics in our findings are negligibly small, which demonstrates the future potential of this cross-correlation technique.
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The polarization of the atmosphere has been a constant concern for ground-based experiments targeting cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization. Ice crystals in upper tropospheric clouds scatter thermal radiation from the ground and produce a horizontally polarized signal. We report a detailed analysis of the cloud signal using a ground-based CMB experiment, Polarbear, located at the Atacama desert in Chile and observing at 150 GHz. We determine horizontally polarized temporal increases of low-frequency fluctuations ("polarized bursts," hereafter) of ≲0.1 K when clouds appear in a webcam monitoring the telescope and the sky. The hypothesis of no correlation between polarized bursts and clouds is rejected with >24σ statistical significance using three years of data. We report many other possibilities including instrumental and environmental effects, and find no reasons other than clouds that can explain the data better. We additionally discuss the impact of the cloud polarization on future ground-based CMB polarization experiments.
We present on the status of POLARBEAR-2 A (PB2-A) focal plane fabrication. The PB2-A is the first of three telescopes in the Simons Array, which is an array of three cosmic microwave background polarization-sensitive telescopes located at the POLARBEAR site in Northern Chile. As the successor to the PB experiment, each telescope and receiver combination is named as PB2-A, PB2-B, and PB2-C. PB2-A and -B will have nearly identical receivers operating at 90 and 150 GHz while PB2-C will house a receiver operating at 220 and 270 GHz. Each receiver contains a focal plane consisting of seven close-hex packed lenslet-coupled sinuous antenna transition edge sensor bolometer arrays. Each array contains 271 dichroic optical pixels, each of which has four TES bolometers for a total of 7588 detectors per receiver. We have produced a set of two types of candidate arrays for PB2-A. The first we call Version 11 (V11) uses a silicon oxide (SiOx) for the transmission lines and crossover process for orthogonal polarizations. The second we call Version 13 (V13) uses silicon nitride (SiNx) for the transmission lines and cross-under process for orthogonal polarizations. We have produced enough of each type of array to fully populate the focal plane of the PB2-A receiver. The average wirebond yield for V11 and V13 arrays is 93.2% and 95.6%, respectively. The V11 arrays had a superconducting transition temperature (T-c) of 452 +/- 15 mK, a normal resistance (R-n) of 1.25 +/- 0.20 Omega, and saturation powers of 5.2 +/- 1.0 pW and 13 +/- 1.2 pW for the 90 and 150 GHz bands, respectively. The V13 arrays had a superconducting transition temperature (T-c) of 456 +/- 6 mK, a normal resistance (R-n) of 1.1 +/- 0.2 Omega, and saturation powers of 10.8 +/- 1.8 pW and 22.9 +/- 2.6 pW for the 90 and 150 GHz bands, respectively. Production and characterization of arrays for PB2-B are ongoing and are expected to be completed by the summer of 2018. We have fabricated the first three candidate arrays for PB2-C but do not have any characterization results to present at this time.
This paper covers the verification and protocol validation for distributed computer and communication systems using a computer aided testing approach. Validation and verification make up the so-called process of conformance testing. Protocol applications which pass conformance testing are then checked to see whether they can operate together. This is referred to as interoperability testing. A new comprehensive approach to protocol testing is presented which address: (1) modeling for inter-layer representation for compatibility between conformance and interoperability testing; (2) computational improvement to current testing methods by using the proposed model inclusive of formulation of new qualitative and quantitative measures and time-dependent behavior; (3) analysis and evaluation of protocol behavior for interactive testing without extensive simulation.