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Title: The effects of cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature uncertainties on cosmological parameter estimation

Journal Article · · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
 [1]
  1. Physik Department T30e, Technische Universitaet Muenchen, James-Franck-Strasse, D-85748 Garching (Germany)

We estimate the effect of the experimental uncertainty in the measurement of the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on the extraction of cosmological parameters from future CMB surveys. We find that even for an ideal experiment limited only by cosmic variance up to l=2500 for both the temperature and polarization measurements, the projected cosmological parameter errors are remarkably robust against the uncertainty of 1 mK in the firas CMB temperature monopole measurement. The maximum degradation in sensitivity is 20%, for the baryon density estimate, relative to the case in which the monopole is known infinitely well. While this degradation is acceptable, we note that reducing the uncertainty in the current temperature measurement by a factor of five will bring it down to {approx}1%. We also estimate the effect of the uncertainty in the dipole temperature measurement. Assuming the overall calibration of the data to be dominated by the dipole error of 0.2% from firas, the sensitivity degradation is insignificant and does not exceed 10% in any parameter direction.

OSTI ID:
22137824
Journal Information:
Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2008, Issue 03; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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