logo
    The CMB flexes its BICEPs while walking the Planck
    0
    Citation
    0
    Reference
    10
    Related Paper
    Abstract:
    Recent microwave polarization measurements from the BICEP2 experiment may reveal a long-sought signature of inflation. However, these new results appear inconsistent with the best-fit model from the Planck satellite. We suggest a particularly simple idea for reconciling these data-sets, and for explaining a wide range of phenomena on the cosmic microwave sky.
    Keywords:
    Planck energy
    Cosmic background radiation
    We use the Planck LFI 70GHz data to further probe point source detection technique in the sky maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. The method developed by Tegmark et al. for foreground reduced maps and the Kolmogorov parameter as the descriptor are adopted for the analysis of Planck satellite CMB temperature data. Most of the detected points coincide with point sources already revealed by other methods. However, we have also found 9 source candidates for which still no counterparts are known.
    Cosmic background radiation
    Point source
    Background radiation
    Citations (0)
    We explore the possible impact of galactic and extragalactic foregrounds on measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We find that, given our present understanding of the foregrounds, they are unlikely to qualitatively affect the ability of the MAP and Planck satellites to determine the angular power spectrum of the CMB, the key statistic for constraining cosmological parameters. Sufficiently far from the galactic plane, the only foregrounds that will affect power spectrum determination with any significance are the extragalactic ones. For MAP we find the most troublesome foregrounds are radio point sources and the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect. For Planck they are these same radio point sources and the Far Infrared Background. Prior knowledge of the statistics of the SZ component (either via theoretical calculation, or higher frequency observations of just a few percent of the sky, such as will be done by balloon-borne experiments) may significantly improve MAP's determination of the CMB power spectrum. We also explore the foreground impact on MAP and Planck polarization power spectrum measurements.
    Galactic plane
    Cosmic background radiation
    Cosmic infrared background
    Planck has produced detailed all-sky observations over nine frequency bands between 30 and 857 GHz. These observations allow robust reconstruction of the primordial cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature fluctuations over nearly the full sky, as well as new constraints on Galactic foregrounds, including thermal dust and line emission from molecular carbon monoxide (CO). This paper describes the component separation framework adopted by Planck for many cosmological analyses, including CMB power spectrum determination and likelihood construction on large angular scales, studies of primordial non-Gaussianity and statistical isotropy, the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect, gravitational lensing, and searches for topological defects. We test four foreground-cleaned CMB maps derived using qualitatively different component separation algorithms. The quality of our reconstructions is evaluated through detailed simulations and internal comparisons, and shown through various tests to be internally consistent and robust for CMB power spectrum and cosmological parameter estimation up to ℓ = 2000. The parameter constraints on ΛCDM cosmologies derived from these maps are consistent with those presented in the cross-spectrum based Planck likelihood analysis. We choose two of the CMB maps for specific scientific goals. We also present maps and frequency spectra of the Galactic low-frequency, CO, and thermal dust emission. The component maps are found to provide a faithful representation of the sky, as evaluated by simulations, with the largest bias seen in the CO component at 3%. For the low-frequency component, the spectral index varies widely over the sky, ranging from about β = −4 to − 2. Considering both morphology and prior knowledge of the low frequencycomponents, the index map allows us to associate a steep spectral index (β< −3.2) with strong anomalous microwave emission, corresponding to a spinning dust spectrum peaking below 20 GHz, a flat index of β> −2.3 with strong free-free emission, and intermediate values with synchrotron emission.
    Cosmic background radiation
    Citations (222)
    In this article, we describe a new estimate of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) intensity map reconstructed by a joint analysis of the full Planck 2015 data (PR2) and WMAP nine-years. It provides more than a mere update of the CMB map introduced in (Bobin et al. 2014b) since it benefits from an improvement of the component separation method L-GMCA (Local-Generalized Morphological Component Analysis) that allows the efficient separation of correlated components (Bobin et al. 2015). Based on the most recent CMB data, we further confirm previous results (Bobin et al. 2014b) showing that the proposed CMB map estimate exhibits appealing characteristics for astrophysical and cosmological applications: i) it is a full sky map that did not require any inpainting or interpolation post-processing, ii) foreground contamination is showed to be very low even on the galactic center, iii) it does not exhibit any detectable trace of thermal SZ contamination. We show that its power spectrum is in good agreement with the Planck PR2 official theoretical best-fit power spectrum. Finally, following the principle of reproducible research, we provide the codes to reproduce the L-GMCA, which makes it the only reproducible CMB map.
    CMB cold spot
    Citations (34)
    The paper is devoted to the methods of determination of the cosmological parameters from recent CMB observations. We show that the more complex models of kinetics of recombination with a few "missing" parameters describing the recombination process provide better agreement between measured and expected characteristics of the CMB anisotropy. In particular, we consider the external sources of the Ly-{alpha} and Ly-{c} radiation and the model with the strong clustering of baryonic component. These factors can constrain the estimates of the cosmological parameters usually discussed. We demonstrate also that the measurements of polarization can improve these estimates and, for the precision expected for the PLANCK mission, allow to discriminate a wide class of models.
    Cosmic background radiation
    Cosmic infrared background
    Background radiation
    Citations (31)
    Recent data have put powerful constraints on the present temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, but the standard cosmological temperature-redshift relation, T = T0(1 + z), remains practically unverified. The Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect is a promising candidate for placing constraints on T (z), the former exhibiting a slight z dependence for all non-standard models. We discuss the possibility of using ratios of CMB intensity distortions due to the SZ effect at different radio frequencies to determine the correct relation. Mock SZ observations on simulated data for a fiducial ΛCDMcosmology are used in testing how well high-frequency data from the Planck satellite will be able to constrain T (z). For a parameterization of the form T = T0(1+z) , where a = 0 corresponds to the standard relation, we find that we can recover a to an accuracy of 10 at the 95% confidence level.
    Cosmic background radiation
    Observational cosmology
    Background radiation
    Citations (0)
    The cosmic expansion is computed for various dynamical vacuum models $\Lambda(H)$ and confronted to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) power spectrum from Planck. We also combined CMB in a joint analysis with other probes in order to place constraints on the cosmological parameters of the dynamical vacuum models. We find that all $\Lambda(H)$ models are very efficient and in very good agreement with the data. Considering that the interaction term of the dark sector is given in terms of matter and radiation densities, we find that the corresponding $\Lambda(H)$ model shows a small but non-zero deviation from $\Lambda$ cosmology, nevertheless the confidence level is close to $\sim 2.5\sigma$.
    Citations (37)
    The Microwave Anisotropy Probe and Planck missions will provide low noise maps of the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). These maps will allow measurement of the power spectrum of the CMB with measurement noise below cosmic variance for l < 1500. It is anticipated that no further all sky CMB temperature observations will be needed after Planck. There are, however, other CMB measurements for which Planck will be not the end but the beginning. Following Planck, precise CMB polarization observations will offer the potential to study physical processes at energies as high as 10^19 GeV. In addition, arcminute scale, multi-frequency observations will allow study of the early phases of the formation of large-scale structure in the universe.
    Cosmic variance
    Planck energy
    It is shown that the fine structure constant at Planck times tends to one as well as those of the weak and strong interactions. This results by constraining them at the Planck force. That seems to provide interesting new results which confirm that at the beginning of space time (Planck scale) all fundamental forces converge to the same unit value.
    Planck length
    Planck energy
    Planck time
    Fine-structure constant
    Planck Constant
    Planck mass
    Coupling constant
    Citations (1)
    We present a new model of the microwave sky in polarization that can be used to simulate data from CMB polarization experiments. We exploit the most recent results from the Planck satellite to provide an accurate description of the diffuse polarized foreground synchrotron and thermal dust emission. Our model can include the two mentioned foregrounds, and also a constructed template of Anomalous Microwave Emission (AME). Several options for the frequency dependence of the foregrounds can be easily selected, to reflect our uncertainties and to test the impact of different assumptions. Small angular scale features can be added to the foreground templates to simulate high-resolution observations. We present tests of the model outputs to show the excellent agreement with Planck and WMAP data. We determine the range within which the foreground spectral indices can be varied to be consistent with the current data. We also show forecasts for a high-sensitivity, high-resolution full-sky experiment such as the Cosmic ORigin Explorer (COrE). Our model is released as a python script that is quick and easy to use, available at \url{http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/~chervias}.
    CMB cold spot
    Cosmic background radiation
    Citations (12)