Observing cosmic microwave background polarization through ice

Ice crystal clouds in the upper troposphere can generate polarization signals at the mu K level. This signal can seriously affect very sensitive ground-based searches for E and B modes of cosmic microwave background polarization. In this paper, we estimate this effect within the ClOVER experiment ob...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Pietranera, L, Buehler, SA, Calisse, PG, Emde, C, Hayton, D, John, VO, Maffei, B, Piccirillo, L, Pisano, G, Savini, G, Sreerekha, TR
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: BLACKWELL PUBLISHING 2007
Subjects:
atmospheric effects
techniques : polarimetric
cosmic microwave background
cosmology : observations
CIRRUS CLOUDS
LIMB
PARAMETERIZATION
ATMOSPHERE
RADIANCES
PROFILES
LIDAR
Antarc*
Antarctica
Online Access:http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/20711/
Description
Summary:Ice crystal clouds in the upper troposphere can generate polarization signals at the mu K level. This signal can seriously affect very sensitive ground-based searches for E and B modes of cosmic microwave background polarization. In this paper, we estimate this effect within the ClOVER experiment observing bands (97, 150 and 220 GHz) for the selected observing site (Llano de Chajnantor, Atacama desert, Chile). The results show that the polarization signal from the clouds can be of the order of or even bigger than the cosmic microwave background expected polarization. Climatological data suggest that this signal is fairly constant over the whole year in Antarctica. On the other hand, the stronger seasonal variability in Atacama allows for a 50 per cent of clean observations during the dry season.

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