Back to Search Start Over

Improved Constraints on Cosmology and Foregrounds from BICEP2 and Keck Array Cosmic Microwave Background Data with Inclusion of 95 GHz Band.

Authors :
Ade PA
Ahmed Z
Aikin RW
Alexander KD
Barkats D
Benton SJ
Bischoff CA
Bock JJ
Bowens-Rubin R
Brevik JA
Buder I
Bullock E
Buza V
Connors J
Crill BP
Duband L
Dvorkin C
Filippini JP
Fliescher S
Grayson J
Halpern M
Harrison S
Hilton GC
Hui H
Irwin KD
Karkare KS
Karpel E
Kaufman JP
Keating BG
Kefeli S
Kernasovskiy SA
Kovac JM
Kuo CL
Leitch EM
Lueker M
Megerian KG
Netterfield CB
Nguyen HT
O'Brient R
Ogburn RW
Orlando A
Pryke C
Richter S
Schwarz R
Sheehy CD
Staniszewski ZK
Steinbach B
Sudiwala RV
Teply GP
Thompson KL
Tolan JE
Tucker C
Turner AD
Vieregg AG
Weber AC
Wiebe DV
Willmert J
Wong CL
Wu WL
Yoon KW
Source :
Physical review letters [Phys Rev Lett] 2016 Jan 22; Vol. 116 (3), pp. 031302. Date of Electronic Publication: 2016 Jan 20.
Publication Year :
2016

Abstract

We present results from an analysis of all data taken by the BICEP2 and Keck Array cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization experiments up to and including the 2014 observing season. This includes the first Keck Array observations at 95 GHz. The maps reach a depth of 50 nK deg in Stokes Q and U in the 150 GHz band and 127 nK deg in the 95 GHz band. We take auto- and cross-spectra between these maps and publicly available maps from WMAP and Planck at frequencies from 23 to 353 GHz. An excess over lensed ΛCDM is detected at modest significance in the 95×150 BB spectrum, and is consistent with the dust contribution expected from our previous work. No significant evidence for synchrotron emission is found in spectra such as 23×95, or for correlation between the dust and synchrotron sky patterns in spectra such as 23×353. We take the likelihood of all the spectra for a multicomponent model including lensed ΛCDM, dust, synchrotron, and a possible contribution from inflationary gravitational waves (as parametrized by the tensor-to-scalar ratio r) using priors on the frequency spectral behaviors of dust and synchrotron emission from previous analyses of WMAP and Planck data in other regions of the sky. This analysis yields an upper limit r_{0.05}<0.09 at 95% confidence, which is robust to variations explored in analysis and priors. Combining these B-mode results with the (more model-dependent) constraints from Planck analysis of CMB temperature plus baryon acoustic oscillations and other data yields a combined limit r_{0.05}<0.07 at 95% confidence. These are the strongest constraints to date on inflationary gravitational waves.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
1079-7114
Volume :
116
Issue :
3
Database :
MEDLINE
Journal :
Physical review letters
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
26849583
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.031302