Consistency of cosmic microwave background temperature measurements in three frequency bands in the 2500-square-degree SPT-SZ survey

We present an internal consistency test of South Pole Telescope (SPT) measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropy using three-band data from the SPT-SZ survey. These measurements are made from observations of ~ 2500 °2 of sky in three frequency bands centered at 95,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Main Authors: Mocanu, L. M., Crites, A. T.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: IOP 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:https://authors.library.caltech.edu/97387/
https://authors.library.caltech.edu/97387/1/1904.12995.pdf
https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20190724-110432838
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Summary:We present an internal consistency test of South Pole Telescope (SPT) measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropy using three-band data from the SPT-SZ survey. These measurements are made from observations of ~ 2500 °2 of sky in three frequency bands centered at 95, 150, and 220 GHz. We combine the information from these three bands into six semi-independent estimates of the CMB power spectrum (three single-frequency power spectra and three cross-frequency spectra) over the multipole range 650<ℓ<3000. We subtract an estimate of foreground power from each power spectrum and evaluate the consistency among the resulting CMB-only spectra. We determine that the six foreground-cleaned power spectra are consistent with the null hypothesis, in which the six cleaned spectra contain only CMB power and noise. A fit of the data to this model results in a χ^2 value of 236.3 for 235 degrees of freedom, and the probability to exceed this χ^2 value is 46%.