Measurements of E-Mode Polarization and Temperature-E-Mode Correlation in the Cosmic Microwave Background from 100 Square Degrees of SPTpol Data

• Main Authors: Crites, A. T., Henning, J. W., Ade, P. A. R., Aird, K. A., Austermann, J. E., Beall, J. A., Bender, A. N., Benson, B. A., Bleem, L. E., Carstrom, J. E., Chang, C. L., Chiang, H. C., Cho, H-M., Citron, R., Crawford, T. M., De Haan, T., Dobbs, M. A., Everett, W., Gallicchio, J, Gao, J., George, E. M., Gilbert, A., Halverson, N. W., Hanson, D., Harrington, N., Hilton, G. C., Holder, G. P., Holzapfel, W. L., Hoover, S., Hou, Z., Hrubes, J. D., Huang, N., Hubmayr, J., Irwin, K. D., Keisler, R., Knox, L., Lee, A. T., Leitch, E. M., Li, D., Liang, C., Luong-Van, D., McMahon, J. J., Mehl, J., Meyer, S. S., Mocanu, L., Montroy, T. E., Natoli, T., Nibarger, J. P., Novosad, V., Padin, S., Pryke, C., Reichardt, C. L., Ruhl, J. E., Saliwanchik, B. R., Sayre, J. T., Schaffer, K. K., Smecher, G., Stark, A. A., Story, K. T., Tucker, C., Vanderlinde, K., Vieira, J. D., Wang, G., Whitehorn, N., Yefremenko, V., Zahn, O.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: arXiv 2014
• Subjects: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics astro-ph.CO; FOS Physical sciences; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1411.1042; https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.1042

We present measurements of $E$-mode polarization and temperature-$E$-mode correlation in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using data from the first season of observations with SPTpol, the polarization-sensitive receiver currently installed on the South Pole Telescope (SPT). The observations used in this work cover 100~\sqdeg\ of sky with arcminute resolution at $150\,$GHz. We report the $E$-mode angular auto-power spectrum ($EE$) and the temperature-$E$-mode angular cross-power spectrum ($TE$) over the multipole range $500 < \ell \leq5000$. These power spectra improve on previous measurements in the high-$\ell$ (small-scale) regime. We fit the combination of the SPTpol power spectra, data from \planck\, and previous SPT measurements with a six-parameter \LCDM cosmological model. We find that the best-fit parameters are consistent with previous results. The improvement in high-$\ell$ sensitivity over previous measurements leads to a significant improvement in the limit on polarized point-source power: after masking sources brighter than 50\,mJy in unpolarized flux at 150\,GHz, we find a 95\% confidence upper limit on unclustered point-source power in the $EE$ spectrum of $D_\ell = \ell (\ell+1) C_\ell / 2 π< 0.40 \ μ{\mbox{K}}^2$ at $\ell=3000$, indicating that future $EE$ measurements will not be limited by power from unclustered point sources in the multipole range $\ell < 3600$, and possibly much higher in $\ell.$