A Measurement of the CMB <EE> Spectrum from the 2003 Flight of BOOMERANG

• Main Authors: Montroy, T E, Ade, P A R, Bock, J J, Bond, J R, Borrill, J, Boscaleri, A, Cabella, P, Contaldi, C R, Crill, B P, De Bernardis, P, De Gasperis, G, De Oliveira-Costa, A, De Troia, G, Stefano, G, Hivon, E, Jaffe, A H, Kisner, T S, Jones, W C, Lange, A E, Masi, S, Mauskopf, P D, MacTavish, C J, Melchiorri, A, Natoli, P, Netterfield, C B, Pascale, E, Piacentini, F, Pogosyan, D, Polenta, G, Prunet, S, Ricciardi, S, Romeo, G, Ruhl, J E, Santini, P, Tegmark, M, Veneziani, M, Vittorio, N
• Language: English
• Published: 2005
• Subjects: Astrophysics and Astronomy; Antarctic; Lambda; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://cds.cern.ch/record/858038

We report measurements of the CMB polarization power spectra from the January 2003 Antarctic flight of BOOMERANG. The primary results come from six days of observation of a patch covering 0.22% of the sky centered near R.A. = 82.5 deg., Dec= -45 deg. The observations were made using four pairs of polarization sensitive bolometers operating in bands centered at 145 GHz. Using two independent analysis pipelines, we measure a non-zero <EE> signal in the range 100< l <1000 with a significance 4.8-sigma, a 2-sigma upper limit of 8.6 uK^2 for any contribution, and a 2-sigma upper limit of 7.0 uK^2 for the <EB> spectrum. Estimates of foreground intensity fluctuations and the non-detection of and <EB> signals rule out any significant contribution from galactic foregrounds. The results are consistent with a Lambda-CDM cosmology seeded by adiabatic perturbations. We note that this is the first detection of CMB polarization with bolometric detectors.