THE ATACAMA COSMOLOGY TELESCOPE: A MEASUREMENT OF THE 600 < l < 8000 COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND POWER SPECTRUM AT 148 GHz
- Joseph Henry Laboratories of Physics, Jadwin Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 (United States)
- Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Peyton Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 (United States)
- School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, The Parade, Cardiff, CF24 3AA Wales (United Kingdom)
- Departamento de AstronomIa y Astrofisica, Facultad de Fisica, PontificIa Universidad Catolica, Casilla 306, Santiago 22 (Chile)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4 (Canada)
- Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3H8 (Canada)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 (United States)
- Code 553/665, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, 209 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (United States)
- NIST Quantum Devices Group, 325 Broadway Mailcode 817.03, Boulder, CO 80305 (United States)
We present a measurement of the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation observed at 148 GHz. The measurement uses maps with 1.'4 angular resolution made with data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). The observations cover 228 deg{sup 2} of the southern sky, in a 4.{sup 0}2 wide strip centered on declination 53{sup 0} south. The CMB at arcminute angular scales is particularly sensitive to the Silk damping scale, to the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect from galaxy clusters, and to emission by radio sources and dusty galaxies. After masking the 108 brightest point sources in our maps, we estimate the power spectrum between 600 < l < 8000 using the adaptive multi-taper method to minimize spectral leakage and maximize use of the full data set. Our absolute calibration is based on observations of Uranus. To verify the calibration and test the fidelity of our map at large angular scales, we cross-correlate the ACT map to the WMAP map and recover the WMAP power spectrum from 250 < l < 1150. The power beyond the Silk damping tail of the CMB (l {approx} 5000) is consistent with models of the emission from point sources. We quantify the contribution of SZ clusters to the power spectrum by fitting to a model normalized to {sigma}{sub 8} = 0.8. We constrain the model's amplitude A{sub SZ} < 1.63 (95% CL). If interpreted as a measurement of {sigma}{sub 8}, this implies {sigma}{sup SZ}{sub 8} < 0.86 (95% CL) given our SZ model. A fit of ACT and WMAP five-year data jointly to a six-parameter {Lambda}CDM model plus point sources and the SZ effect is consistent with these results.
- OSTI ID:
- 21464641
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 722, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/722/2/1148; ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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