A New Limit on CMB Circular Polarization from SPIDER

Journal Article · Wed Aug 02 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · The Astrophysical Journal (Online)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa7cfd· OSTI ID:1390288

Nagy, J. M.  ^[1]; Ade, P. A. R.  ^[2]; Amiri, M. ^[3]; Benton, S. J. ^[4]; Bergman, A. S.  ^[4]; Bihary, R. ^[1]; Bock, J. J. ^[5]; Bond, J. R.  ^[6]; Bryan, S. A.  ^[7]; Chiang, H. C. ^[8]; Contaldi, C. R.  ^[9]; Doré, O. ^[5]; Duivenvoorden, A. J. ^[10]; Eriksen, H. K.  ^[11]; Farhang, M. ^[12]; Filippini, J. P.  ^[13]; Fissel, L. M.  ^[14]; Fraisse, A. A. ^[4]; Freese, K. ^[15]; Galloway, M. ^[16] ; Gambrel, A. E. ^[4]; Gandilo, N. N. ^[17]; Ganga, K. ^[18]; Gudmundsson, J. E.  ^[10]; Halpern, M.  ^[3]; Hartley, J. ^[16]; Hasselfield, M. ^[19]; Hilton, G. ^[20]; Holmes, W. ^[21]; Hristov, V. V. ^[22]; Huang, Z. ^[6]; Irwin, K. D.  ^[23]; Jones, W. C.  ^[4]; Kuo, C. L. ^[24]; Kermish, Z. D. ^[4]; Li, S. ^[25]; Mason, P. V. ^[22]; Megerian, K. ^[21]; Moncelsi, L.  ^[22]; Morford, T. A. ^[22]; Netterfield, C. B. ^[26]; Nolta, M. ^[6]; Padilla, I. L. ^[27]; Racine, B. ^[11]; Rahlin, A. S.  ^[28]; Reintsema, C. ^[20]; Ruhl, J. E. ^[1]; Runyan, M. C. ^[21]; Ruud, T. M.  ^[11]; Shariff, J. A. ^[6]; Soler, J. D. ^[29]; Song, X. ^[4]; Trangsrud, A. ^[5]; Tucker, C.  ^[2]; Tucker, R. S. ^[22]; Turner, A. D. ^[21]; List, J. F. Van Der  ^[4]; Weber, A. C. ^[21]; Wehus, I. K. ^[11]; Wiebe, D. V. ^[3]; Young, E. Y. ^[4]

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1. Case Western Reserve Univ., Cleveland, OH (United States). Physics Dept.
2. Cardiff Univ., Cardiff (United Kingdom). School of Physics and Astronomy
3. Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC (Canada). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
4. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Dept. of Physics
5. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States). Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy; California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States). Jet Propulsion Lab.
6. Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada). Canadian Inst. for Theoretical Astrophysics
7. Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ (United States). School of Earth and Space Exploration
8. Univ. of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban (South Africa); National Institute for Theoretical Physics (NITheP), KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa)
9. Imperial College, London (United Kingdom). Blackett Lab.
10. Stockholm Univ. (Sweden). Oskar Klein Centre for Cosmoparticle Physics, Dept. of Physics
11. Univ. of Oslo (Norway). Inst. of Theoretical Astrophysics
12. Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada). Canadian Inst. for Theoretical Astrophysics; Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada). Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics
13. Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States). Dept. of Physics; Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States). Dept. of Astronomy
14. Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada). Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics; National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, NC (United States)
15. Stockholm Univ. (Sweden). Oskar Klein Centre for Cosmoparticle Physics, Dept. of Physics; Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States). Dept. of Physics
16. Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada). Dept. of Physics
17. Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, MD (United States). Department of Physics and Astronomy; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
18. Univ. Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cite (France)
19. Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, PA (United States). Dept of Astronomy and Astrophysics
20. National Inst. of Standards and Technology (NIST), Boulder, CO (United States)
21. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States). Jet Propulsion Lab.
22. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States). Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy
23. Stanford Univ., CA (United States). Dept. of Physics; SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
24. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
25. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Dept. of Physics; Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada). Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics; Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Dept. of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
26. Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada). Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics; Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada). Dept. of Physics
27. Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada). Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics
28. Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States). Kavli Inst. for Cosmological Physics
29. Max Planck Inst. for Astronomy, Heidelberg, (Germany); Astrophysics, Instrumentation and Modelling (AIM) Lab., Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex (France) ; Univ. Paris Diderot, Paris (France)

We present a new upper limit on CMB circular polarization from the 2015 flight of SPIDER, a balloon-borne telescope designed to search for $$B$$-mode linear polarization from cosmic inflation. Although the level of circular polarization in the CMB is predicted to be very small, experimental limits provide a valuable test of the underlying models. By exploiting the non-zero circular-to-linear polarization coupling of the HWP polarization modulators, data from SPIDER's 2015 Antarctic flight provides a constraint on Stokes $$V$$ at 95 and 150 GHz from $$33<\ell<307$$. No other limits exist over this full range of angular scales, and SPIDER improves upon the previous limit by several orders of magnitude, providing 95% C.L. constraints on $$\ell (\ell+1)C_{\ell}^{VV}/(2\pi)$$ ranging from 141 $$\mu K ^2$$ to 203 $$\mu K ^2$$ at 150 GHz for a thermal CMB spectrum. As linear CMB polarization experiments become increasingly sensitive, the techniques described in this paper can be applied to obtain stronger constraints on circular polarization.

• Research Organization: SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
• Contributing Organization: SPIDER
• Grant/Contract Number: AC02-76SF00515; AC02-07CH11359
• OSTI ID: 1390288
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1362139
• Report Number(s): FERMILAB-PUB-17-135-AE; arXiv:1704.00215
• Journal Information: The Astrophysical Journal (Online), Vol. 844, Issue 2; ISSN 1538-4357
• Publisher: Institute of Physics (IOP)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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