CMB map-making and power spectrum estimation

CMB data analysis is in general done through two main steps : map-making of the time data streams and power spectrum extraction from the maps. The latter basically consists in the separation between the variance of the CMB and that of the noise in the map. Noise must therefore be deeply understood so that the estimation of CMB variance (the power spectrum) is unbiased. I present in this article general techniques to make maps from time streams and to extract the power spectrum from them. We will see that exact, maximum likelihood solutions are in general too slow and hard to deal with to be used in modern experiments such as Archeops and should be replaced by approximate, iterative or Monte-Carlo approaches that lead to similar precision.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, to appear in C.R. Physiqu

Bandwidth in bolometric interferometry

Bolometric Interferometry is a technology currently under development that will be first dedicated to the detection of B-mode polarization fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background. A bolometric interferometer will have to take advantage of the wide spectral detection band of its bolometers in order to be competitive with imaging experiments. A crucial concern is that interferometers are presumed to be importantly affected by a spoiling effect known as bandwidth smearing. In this paper, we investigate how the bandwidth modifies the work principle of a bolometric interferometer and how it affects its sensitivity to the CMB angular power spectra. We obtain analytical expressions for the broadband visibilities measured by broadband heterodyne and bolometric interferometers. We investigate how the visibilities must be reconstructed in a broadband bolometric interferometer and show that this critically depends on hardware properties of the modulation phase shifters. Using an angular power spectrum estimator accounting for the bandwidth, we finally calculate the sensitivity of a broadband bolometric interferometer. A numerical simulation has been performed and confirms the analytical results. We conclude (i) that broadband bolometric interferometers allow broadband visibilities to be reconstructed whatever the kind of phase shifters used and (ii) that for dedicated B-mode bolometric interferometers, the sensitivity loss due to bandwidth smearing is quite acceptable, even for wideband instruments (a factor 2 loss for a typical 20% bandwidth experiment).Comment: 13 pages, 14 figures, submitted to A&

Correlation of the South Pole 94 data with 100µm and 408 MHz maps

We present a correlation between the ACME/SP94 CMB anisotropy data at 25 to 45 GHz with the IRAS/DIRBE data and the Haslam 408 MHz data. We find a marginal correlation between the dust and the Q-band CMB data but none between the CMB data and the Haslam map. While the amplitude of the correlation with the dust is larger than that expected from naive models of dust emission, it does not dominate the sky emission

Archeops, mapping the CMB sky from large to small angular scales

Archeops is a balloon-borne experiment designed to measure the temperature fluctuations of the CMB on a large region of the sky ($\simeq 30$) with a high angular resolution (10 arcminutes) and a high sensitivity ($60\mu K$ per pixel). Archeops will perform a measurement of the CMB anisotropies power spectrum from large angular scales ($\ell\simeq 30$) to small angular scales ($\ell \simeq 800$). Archeops flew for the first time for a test flight in July 1999 from Sicily to Spain and the first scientific flight took place from Sweden to Russia in January 2001. The data analysis is on its way and I present here preliminary results, realistic simulations showing the expected accuracy on the measurement of the power spectrum and perspectives for the incoming flights (Winter 2001/2003).Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, proceedings to TAUP2001 conference, LNGS, Italy, Sept. 200

Archeops results

\Archeops is a balloon--borne instrument dedicated to measuring cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies at high angular resolution ($\sim$ 12 arcmin.) over a large fraction (30%) of the sky in the (sub)millimetre domain (from 143 to 545 GHz). We describe the results obtained during the last flight: the \Archeops estimate of the CMB angular power spectrum linking for the first time \Cobe scales and the first acoustic peak, consequences in terms of cosmological parementers favouring a flat-$\Lambda$ Universe. We also present the first measurement of galactic dust polarization and accurate maps of the galactic plane diffuse (sub) millimetre emisson.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, to appear in C.R. Physiqu

Angular Power Spectrum Estimation of Cosmic Ray Anisotropies with Full or Partial Sky Coverage

We study the angular power spectrum estimate in order to search for large scale anisotropies in the arrival directions distribution of the highest-energy cosmic rays. We show that this estimate can be performed even in the case of partial sky coverage and validated over the full sky under the assumption that the observed fluctuations are statistically spatial stationary. If this hypothesis - which can be tested directly on the data - is not satisfied, it would prove, of course, that the cosmic ray sky is non isotropic but also that the power spectrum is not an appropriate tool to represent its anisotropies, whatever the sky coverage available. We apply the method to simulations of the Pierre Auger Observatory, reconstructing an input power spectrum with the Southern site only and with both Northern and Southern ones. Finally, we show the improvement that a full-sky observatory brings to test an isotropic distribution, and we discuss the sensitivity of the Pierre Auger Observatory to large scale anisotropies.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, version accepted for publication by JCA

A new method to search for a cosmic ray dipole anisotropy

We propose a new method to determine the dipole (and quadrupole) component of a distribution of cosmic ray arrival directions, which can be applied when there is partial sky coverage and/or inhomogeneous exposure. In its simplest version it requires that the exposure only depends on the declination, but it can be easily extended to the case of a small amplitude modulation in right ascension. The method essentially combines a $\chi^2$ minimization of the distribution in declination to obtain the multipolar components along the North-South axis and a harmonic Rayleigh analysis for the components involving the right ascension direction

Sensitivity of a Bolometric Interferometer to the CMB power spectrum

Context. The search for B-mode polarization fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background is one of the main challenges of modern cosmology. The expected level of the B-mode signal is very low and therefore requires the development of highly sensitive instruments with low systematic errors. An appealing possibility is bolometric interferometry. Aims. We compare in this article the sensitivity on the CMB angular power spectrum achieved with direct imaging, heterodyne and bolometric interferometry. Methods. Using a simple power spectrum estimator, we calculate its variance leading to the counterpart for bolometric interferometry of the well known Knox formula for direct imaging. Results. We find that bolometric interferometry is less sensitive than direct imaging. However, as expected, it is finally more sensitive than heterodyne interferometry due to the low noise of the bolometers. It therefore appears as an alternative to direct imagers with different and possibly lower systematic errors, mainly due to the absence of an optical setup in front of the horns.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. This last version matches the published version (Astronomy and Astrophysics 491 3 (2008) 923-927). Sensitivity of Heterodyne Interferometers modified by a factor of tw