Characterization of the Millimeter-Wave Polarization of Centaurus A with QUaD
- Creators
-
Zemcov, M.
- Ade, P.
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Bock, J.
- Bowden, M.
- Brown, M. L.
- Cahill, G.
- Castro, P. G.
- Church, S.
- Culverhouse, T.
- Friedman, R. B.
- Ganga, K.
- Gear, W. K.
- Gupta, S.
- Hinderks, J.
- Kovac, J.
- Lange, A. E.
- Leitch, E.
- Melhuish, S. J.
- Memari, Y.
- Murphy, J. A.
- Orlando, A.
- O'Sullivan, C.
- Piccirillo, L.
- Pryke, C.
- Rajguru, N.
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Rusholme, B.
- Schwarz, R.
- Taylor, A. N.
- Thompson, K. L.
- Turner, A. H.
- Wu, E. Y. S.
- QUaD collaboration
Abstract
Centaurus (Cen) A represents one of the best candidates for an isolated, compact, highly polarized source that is bright at typical cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment frequencies. We present measurements of the 4° × 2° region centered on Cen A with QUaD, a CMB polarimeter whose absolute polarization angle is known to an accuracy of 0°.5. Simulations are performed to assess the effect of misestimation of the instrumental parameters on the final measurement and systematic errors due to the field's background structure and temporal variability from Cen A's nuclear region are determined. The total (Q, U) of the inner lobe region is (1.00 ± 0.07(stat.) ± 0.04(sys.), -1.72 ± 0.06 ± 0.05) Jy at 100 GHz and (0.80 ± 0.06 ± 0.06, – 1.40 ± 0.07 ± 0.08) Jy at 150 GHz, leading to polarization angles and total errors of –30.°0 ± 1.°1 and –29.°1 ± 1.°7. These measurements will allow the use of Cen A as a polarized calibration source for future millimeter experiments.
Additional Information
© 2010 American Astronomical Society. Print publication: Issue 2 (2010 February 20); received 2009 August 17; accepted for publication 2009 December 30; published 2010 February 1. QUaD is funded by the National Science Foundation in the USA, through grants ANT-0338138, ANT-0338335, and ANT- 0338238, by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) in the UK and by the Science Foundation Ireland. The BOOMERanG collaboration kindly allowed the use of their CMB maps for our calibration purposes. M.Z. acknowledges support from aNASA Postdoctoral Fellowship. P.G.C. acknowledges funding from the Portuguese FCT. S.E.C. acknowledges support from a Stanford Terman Fellowship. J.R.H. acknowledges the support of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a Stanford Graduate Fellowship, and a NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship. Y.M. acknowledges support from a SUPA Prize studentship. C.P. acknowledges partial support from the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics through the grant NSF PHY-0114422. E.Y.W. acknowledges receipt of an NDSEG fellowship.Attached Files
Published - Zemcov2010p7140Astrophys_J.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 17581
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20100224-112332982
- NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship
- Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)
- Stanford Terman Fellowship
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
- Stanford Graduate Fellowship
- SUPA Prize studentship
- Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
- PHY-0114422
- NSF
- National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) fellowship
- Created
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2010-02-24Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-08Created from EPrint's last_modified field