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Josquin Errard

Publications and source records attributed to Josquin Errard.

Constraints on the Optical Depth to Reionization from Balloon-borne Cosmic Microwave Background Measurements

We assess the uncertainty with which a balloon-borne experiment, nominally called Tau Surveyor (τS), can measure the optical depth to reionization σ(τ) with given realistic constraints of instrument noise and foreground emissions. Using a τS fiducial design with six frequency bands between 150 and 380 GHz, with white and uniform map noise of 7 μK arcmin, achievable with a single midlatitude flight, and including Planck's 30 and 44 GHz data, we assess the error σ(τ) obtained with three foreground models and as a function of sky fraction f sky between 40% and 54%. We carry out the analysis using both parametric and blind foreground separation techniques. We compare the σ(τ) values to those obtained with low-frequency and high-frequency versions of the experiment called τS-lf and τS-hf, which have only four and up to eight frequency bands with narrower and wider frequency coverage, respectively. We find that with τS, the lowest constraint is σ(τ) = 0.0034, obtained for one of the foreground models with f sky = 54%. σ(τ) is larger, in some cases by more than a factor of 2, for smaller sky fractions, with τS-lf, or as a function of foreground model. The τS-hf configuration does not lead to significantly tighter constraints. The exclusion of the 30 and 44 GHz data, which give information about synchrotron emission, leads to significant τ misestimates. Decreasing noise by an ambitious factor of 10, while keeping f sky = 40%, gives σ(τ) = 0.0031. The combination of σ(τ) = 0.0034, baryon acoustic oscillation data from DESI, and future cosmic microwave background B-mode lensing data from the CMB-S3/CMB-S4 experiments could give σ(∑m v ) = 17 meV.

cosmic microwave background radiation↗

Simons Observatory: Constraining inflationary gravitational waves with multitracer B-mode delensing

We introduce and validate a delensing framework for the Simons Observatory (SO), which will be used to improve constraints on inflationary gravitational waves by reducing the lensing noise in measurements of the B modes in CMB polarization. SO will initially observe CMB by using three small aperture telescopes and one large-aperture telescope. While polarization maps from small-aperture telescopes will be used to constrain inflationary gravitational waves, the internal CMB lensing maps used to delens will be reconstructed from data from the large-aperture telescope. Since lensing maps obtained from the SO data will be noise dominated on subdegree scales, the SO lensing framework constructs a template for lensing-induced B modes by combining internal CMB lensing maps with maps of the cosmic infrared background from Planck as well as galaxy density maps from the LSST survey. We construct a likelihood for constraining the tensor-to-scalar ratio r that contains auto and cross spectra between observed B modes and the lensing B-mode template. We test our delensing analysis pipeline on map-based simulations containing survey nonidealities, but that, for this initial exploration, does not include contamination from Galactic and extragalactic foregrounds. We find that the SO survey masking and inhomogeneous and atmospheric noise have very little impact on the delensing performance, and the r constraint becomes σ(r)≈0.0015 which is close to that obtained from the idealized forecasts in the absence of the Galactic foreground and is nearly a factor of 2 tighter than without delensing. We also find that uncertainties in the external large-scale structure tracers used in our multitracer delensing pipeline lead to bias much smaller than the 1σ statistical uncertainties.

Toshiya Namikawa↗

The Simons Observatory: science goals andforecasts

The Simons Observatory (SO) is a new cosmic microwave background experiment being built on Cerro Toco in Chile, due to begin observations in the early 2020s. We describe the scientific goals of the experiment, motivate the design, and forecast its performance. SO will measure the temperature and polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background in six frequency bands centered at: 27, 39, 93, 145, 225 and 280 GHz. The initial configuration of SO will have three small-aperture 0.5-m telescopes and one large-aperture 6-m telescope, with a total of 60,000 cryogenic bolometers. Our key science goals are to characterize the primordial perturbations, measure the number of relativistic species and the mass of neutrinos, test for deviations from a cosmological constant, improve our understanding of galaxy evolution, and constrain the duration of reionization. The small aperture telescopes will target the largest angular scales observable from Chile, mapping ≈ 10% of the sky to a white noise level of 2 μK-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, to measure the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio, r, at a target level of σ(r)=0.003. The large aperture telescope will map ≈ 40% of the sky at arcminute angular resolution to an expected white noise level of 6 μK-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, overlapping with the majority of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope sky region and partially with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. With up to an order of magnitude lower polarization noise than maps from the Planck satellite, the high-resolution sky maps will constrain cosmological parameters derived from the damping tail, gravitational lensing of the microwave background, the primordial bispectrum, and the thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects, and will aid in delensing the large-angle polarization signal to measure the tensor-to-scalar ratio. The survey will also provide a legacy catalog of 16,000 galaxy clusters and more than 20,000 extragalactic sources.

Peter Ade↗

The Simons Observatory: Science Goals and Forecasts

The Simons Observatory (SO) is a new cosmic microwave background experiment being built on CerroToco in Chile, due to begin observations in the early 2020s. We describe the scientific goals of the experiment, motivate the design, and forecast its performance. SO will measure the temperature and polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background in six frequency bands centered at: 27,39, 93, 145, 225 and 280 GHz. The initial configuration of SO will have three small-aperture 0.5-mtelescopes and one large-aperture 6-m telescope, with a total of 60,000 cryogenic bolometers. Our key science goals are to characterize the primordial perturbations, measure the number of relativistic species and the mass of neutrinos, test for deviations from a cosmological constant, improve our understanding of galaxy evolution, and constrain the duration of reionization. The small aperture telescopes will target the largest angular scales observable from Chile, mapping≈10% of the sky to a white noise level of 2μK-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, to measure the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio, r, at a target level ofσ(r) = 0.003. The large aperture telescope will map ≈40% of the sky at arcminute angular resolution to an expected white noise level of 6μK-arcminin combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, overlapping with the majority of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope sky region and partially with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. With up to an order of magnitude lower polarization noise than maps from the Planck satellite, the high-resolution sky maps will constrain cosmological parameters derived from the damping tail, gravitational lensing of the microwave background, the primordial bispectrum, and the thermal and kinematic Sunyaev–Zel’dovich effects, and will aid in delensing the large-angle polarization signal to measure the tensor-to-scalar ratio. The survey will also provide a legacy catalog of 16,000 galaxy clusters and more than20,000 extragalactic sources.

Peter Ade↗