TO BE SUBMITTED TO A JOURNAL TBD Preprint typeset using LATEX style emulateapj v. 04/17/13 BICEP2 I: DETECTION OF B-mode POLARIZATION AT DEGREE ANGULAR SCALES
to be submitted to a journal TBD We report results from the BICEP2 experiment, a Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarimeter specif-ically designed to search for the signal of inflationary gravitational waves in the B-mode power spectrum around ` ∼ 80. The telescope comprised a 26 cm aperture all-...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.655.9347 http://kicp.uchicago.edu/pdf/bicep2_2014-03-17.pdf |
| Summary: | to be submitted to a journal TBD We report results from the BICEP2 experiment, a Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarimeter specif-ically designed to search for the signal of inflationary gravitational waves in the B-mode power spectrum around ` ∼ 80. The telescope comprised a 26 cm aperture all-cold refracting optical system equipped with a focal plane of 512 antenna coupled transition edge sensor (TES) 150 GHz bolometers each with temperature sensitivity of ≈ 300 µKCMB s. BICEP2 observed from the South Pole for three seasons from 2010 to 2012. A low-foreground region of sky with an effective area of 380 square degrees was observed to a depth of 87 nK-degrees in Stokes Q and U. In this paper we describe the observations, data reduction, maps, simulations and results. We find an excess of B-mode power over the base lensed-ΛCDM expectation in the range 30 < ` < 150, inconsistent with the null hypothesis at a significance of> 5σ. Through jackknife tests and simulations based on detailed calibration measurements we show that systematic contamination is much smaller than the observed excess. We also estimate potential foreground signals and find that available models predict these to be considerably smaller than the observed signal. These foreground models possess no significant cross-correlation with our |
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