Assessing consistency between CMB temperature and polarization measurements, with application to Planck, ACT and SPT

• Published in: Physical Review D
• Main Authors: La Posta, Adrien, Natale, Umberto, Calabrese, Erminia, Garrido, Xavier, Louis, Thibaut
• Other Authors: Laboratoire de Physique des 2 Infinis Irène Joliot-Curie (IJCLab), Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules du CNRS (IN2P3)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Cardiff University, European Project: 849169,ERC-2019-STG
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2023
• Subjects: [PHYS.ASTR]Physics [physics]/Astrophysics [astro-ph]; South Pole; Lambda; South pole
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-03644852; https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.107.023510

International audience Planck's Cosmic Microwave Background temperature and polarization observations are the premier dataset for constraining cosmological models. Cosmic variance limited temperature at large and intermediate scales today dominates the constraints; polarization provides additional constraining power and further scrutiny of the models. To complete this picture from Planck, ground-based experiments, such as the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and the South Pole Telescope (SPT) continue to add temperature and polarization measurements at small scales, allowing for the extraction of competitive cosmological constraints from the $TE$ and $EE$ power spectra. Matching at the same time all these stringent probes is a key challenge and validation step for any cosmological model. In particular, $\Lambda$CDM requires a tight consistency between the temperature and polarization measurements. In this paper, we present a number of methods to identify and quantify possible inconsistencies between temperature and polarization, we apply them to the latest Planck, ACT and SPT data and find no evidence for a deviation from $\Lambda$CDM. Application of these methods will have increased importance for future, more constraining CMB data.