A Constraint on Primordial B-modes from the First Flight of the Spider Balloon-borne Telescope
- Creators
-
Ade, P. A. R.
- Amiri, M.
- Benton, S. J.
- Bergman, A. S.
- Bihary, R.
-
Bock, J. J.
- Bond, J. R.
- Bonetti, J. A.
- Bryan, S. A.
- Chiang, H. C.
- Contaldi, C. R.
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Doré, O.
- Duivenvoorden, A. J.
- Eriksen, H. K.
- Farhang, M.
- Filippini, J. P.
- Fraisse, A. A.
- Freese, K.
- Galloway, M.
- Gambrel, A. E.
- Gandilo, N. N.
- Ganga, K.
- Gualtieri, R.
- Gudmundsson, J. E.
- Halpern, M.
- Hartley, J.
- Hasselfield, M.
- Hilton, G.
- Holmes, W.
- Hristov, V. V.
- Huang, Z.
- Irwin, K. D.
- Jones, W. C.
- Karakci, A.
- Kuo, C. L.
- Kermish, Z. D.
- Leung, J. S. -Y.
- Li, S.
- Mak, D. S. Y.
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Mason, P. V.
- Megerian, K.
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Moncelsi, L.
- Morford, T. A.
- Nagy, J. M.
- Netterfield, C. B.
- Nolta, M.
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O'Brient, R.
- Osherson, B.
- Padilla, I. L.
- Racine, B.
- Rahlin, A. S.
- Reintsema, C.
- Ruhl, J. E.
- Runyan, M. C.
- Ruud, T. M.
- Shariff, J. A.
- Shaw, E. C.
- Shiu, C.
- Soler, J. D.
- Song, X.
- Trangsrud, A.
- Tucker, C.
- Tucker, R. S.
- Turner, A. D.
- van der List, J. F.
- Weber, A. C.
- Wehus, I. K.
- Wen, S.
- Wiebe, D. V.
- Young, E. Y.
- SPIDER Collaboration
Abstract
We present the first linear polarization measurements from the 2015 long-duration balloon flight of Spider, which is an experiment that is designed to map the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on degree angular scales. The results from these measurements include maps and angular power spectra from observations of 4.8% of the sky at 95 and 150 GHz, along with the results of internal consistency tests on these data. While the polarized CMB anisotropy from primordial density perturbations is the dominant signal in this region of sky, Galactic dust emission is also detected with high significance. Galactic synchrotron emission is found to be negligible in the Spider bands. We employ two independent foreground-removal techniques to explore the sensitivity of the cosmological result to the assumptions made by each. The primary method uses a dust template derived from Planck data to subtract the Galactic dust signal. A second approach, which constitutes a joint analysis of Spider and Planck data in the harmonic domain, assumes a modified-blackbody model for the spectral energy distribution of the dust with no constraint on its spatial morphology. Using a likelihood that jointly samples the template amplitude and r parameter space, we derive 95% upper limits on the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio from Feldman–Cousins and Bayesian constructions, finding r < 0.11 and r < 0.19, respectively. Roughly half the uncertainty in r derives from noise associated with the template subtraction. New data at 280 GHz from Spider's second flight will complement the Planck polarization maps, providing powerful measurements of the polarized Galactic dust emission.
Additional Information
© 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Received 2021 April 6; revised 2021 August 5; accepted 2021 August 15; published 2022 March 14. Spider is supported in the U.S. by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under grants NNX07AL64G, NNX12AE95G, and NNX17AC55G issued through the Science Mission Directorate and by the National Science Foundation through PLR-1043515. Logistical support for the Antarctic deployment and operations is provided by the NSF through the U.S. Antarctic Program. Support in Canada is provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Canadian Space Agency. Support in Norway is provided by the Research Council of Norway. Support in Sweden is provided by the Swedish Research Council through the Oskar Klein Centre (Contract No. 638-2013-8993) as well as a grant from the Swedish Research Council (dnr. 2019-93959) and a grant from the Swedish Space Agency (dnr. 139/17). The Dunlap Institute is funded through an endowment established by the David Dunlap family and the University of Toronto. The multiplexing readout electronics were developed with support from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund. KF holds the Jeff & Gail Kodosky Endowed Chair at UT Austin and is grateful for that support. W.C.J. acknowledges the generous support of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, which has been crucial to the success of the project. C.R.C. was supported by UKRI Consolidated Grants, ST/P000762/1, ST/N000838/1, and ST/T000791/1. Some of the results in this paper have been derived using the HEALPix package (Gorski et al. 2005). The computations described in this paper were performed on four computing clusters: Hippo at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Feynman at Princeton University, and the GPC and Niagara supercomputers at the SciNet HPC Consortium (Loken et al. 2010; Ponce et al. 2019). SciNet is funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation under the auspices of Compute Canada, the Government of Ontario, Ontario Research Fund—Research Excellence, and the University of Toronto. This collaboration is grateful to the British Antarctic Survey, particularly Sam Burrell, and to the Alfred Wegener Institute and the crew of R.V. Polarstern for invaluable assistance with the recovery of the data and payload after the 2015 flight. Brendan Crill and Tom Montroy made significant contributions to Spider's development. Paul Steinhardt provided very helpful comments regarding the status of early-universe models. This project, like so many others that he founded and supported, owes much to the vision and leadership of the late Professor Andrew E. Lange.Attached Files
Published - Ade_2022_ApJ_927_174.pdf
Submitted - 2103.13334.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 108675
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20210409-121742575
- NASA
- NNX07AL64G
- NASA
- NNX12AE95G
- NASA
- NNX17AC55G
- NSF
- PLR-1043515
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- Canadian Space Agency (CSA)
- Research Council of Norway
- Swedish Research Council
- 638-2013-8993
- Swedish Research Council
- 2019-93959
- Swedish Space Agency
- 139/17
- David Dunlap Family
- University of Toronto
- Canada Foundation for Innovation
- British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund
- University of Texas at Austin
- David and Lucile Packard Foundation
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
- ST/P000762/1
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
- ST/N000838/1
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
- ST/T000791/1
- Compute Canada
- Ontario Research Fund-Research Excellence
- Created
-
2021-04-11Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2023-03-15Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Astronomy Department