Degree-scale cosmic microwave background polarization measurements from three years of BICEP1 data
- Joint ALMA Observatory, ESO, Santiago (Chile)
- Department of Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street MS 42, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
- Department of Physics, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 (United States)
- Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Wales, Cardiff, CF24 3YB Wales (United Kingdom)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA 91109 (United States)
- Astrophysics and Cosmology Research Unit, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban (South Africa)
- SBT, Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, Grenoble F-38041 (France)
- Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, Paris (France)
- Department of Physics, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
BICEP1 is a millimeter-wavelength telescope designed specifically to measure the inflationary B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background at degree angular scales. We present results from an analysis of the data acquired during three seasons of observations at the South Pole (2006-2008). This work extends the two-year result published in Chiang et al., with additional data from the third season and relaxed detector-selection criteria. This analysis also introduces a more comprehensive estimation of band power window functions, improved likelihood estimation methods, and a new technique for deprojecting monopole temperature-to-polarization leakage that reduces this class of systematic uncertainty to a negligible level. We present maps of temperature, E- and B-mode polarization, and their associated angular power spectra. The improvement in the map noise level and polarization spectra error bars are consistent with the 52% increase in integration time relative to Chiang et al. We confirm both self-consistency of the polarization data and consistency with the two-year results. We measure the angular power spectra at 21 ≤ ℓ ≤ 335 and find that the EE spectrum is consistent with Lambda cold dark matter cosmology, with the first acoustic peak of the EE spectrum now detected at 15σ. The BB spectrum remains consistent with zero. From B-modes only, we constrain the tensor-to-scalar ratio to r=0.03{sub −0.23}{sup +0.27}, or r < 0.70 at 95% confidence level.
- OSTI ID:
- 22351334
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 783, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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