Can Tidal Perturbations Associated with Sea Level Variations in the Western Pacific Ocean be used to Understand Future Effects of Tidal Evolution?

This study examines connections between mean sea level (MSL) variability and diurnal and semidiurnal tidal constituent variations at 17 open-ocean and 9 continental shelf tide gauges in the western tropical Pacific Ocean, a region showing anomalous rise in MSL over the last 20 years and strong interannual variability. Detrended MSL fluctuations are correlated with detrended tidal amplitude and phase fluctuations, defined as tidal anomaly trends (TATs), to quantify the response of tidal properties to MSL variation. About 20 significant amplitude and phase TATs are found for each of the two strongest tidal constituents, K1 (diurnal) and M2 (semidiurnal). Lesser constituents (O1 and S2) show trends at nearly half of all gauges. Fluctuations in MSL shift amplitudes and phases; both positive and negative responses occur. Changing overtides suggest TATs are influenced by changing shallow water friction over the equatorial Western Pacific and the eastern coast of Australia (especially near the Great Barrier Reef). There is a strong connection between semidiurnal TATs at stations around the Solomon Islands and changes in thermocline depth, overtide generation, and the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). TATs for O1, K1 and M2 are related to each other in a manner that suggests transfer of energy from M2 to the two diurnals via resonant triad interactions; these cause major tidal variability on sub-decadal time scales, especially for M2. The response of tides to MSL variability is not only spatially complex, it is frequency dependent; therefore, short-term responses may not predict long-term behavior

Power-law Template for Infrared Point-source Clustering

We perform a combined fit to angular power spectra of unresolved infrared (IR) point sources from the Planck satellite (at 217, 353, 545, and 857 GHz, over angular scales 100 ≾ ℓ ≾ 2200), the Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST; 250, 350, and 500μm; 1000 ≾ ℓ ≾ 9000), and from correlating BLAST and Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT; 148 and 218 GHz) maps. We find that the clustered power over the range of angular scales and frequencies considered is well fitted by a simple power law of the form C^(clust)_ℓ ∝ ℓ^(-n) with n = 1.25 ± 0.06. While the IR sources are understood to lie at a range of redshifts, with a variety of dust properties, we find that the frequency dependence of the clustering power can be described by the square of a modified blackbody, ν^(β)B(ν, T_(eff)), with a single emissivity index β = 2.20 ± 0.07 and effective temperature T_(eff) = 9.7 K. Our predictions for the clustering amplitude are consistent with existing ACT and South Pole Telescope results at around 150 and 220 GHz, as is our prediction for the effective dust spectral index, which we find to be α_(150–220) = 3.68±0.07 between 150 and 220 GHz. Our constraints on the clustering shape and frequency dependence can be used to model the IR clustering as a contaminant in cosmic microwave background anisotropy measurements. The combined Planck and BLAST data also rule out a linear bias clustering model

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Cross Correlation with Planck maps

We present the temperature power spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background obtained by cross-correlating maps from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) at 148 and 218 GHz with maps from the Planck satellite at 143 and 217 GHz, in two overlapping regions covering 592 square degrees. We find excellent agreement between the two datasets at both frequencies, quantified using the variance of the residuals between the ACT power spectra and the ACTxPlanck cross-spectra. We use these cross-correlations to calibrate the ACT data at 148 and 218 GHz, to 0.7% and 2% precision respectively. We find no evidence for anisotropy in the calibration parameter. We compare the Planck 353 GHz power spectrum with the measured amplitudes of dust and cosmic infrared background (CIB) of ACT data at 148 and 218 GHz. We also compare planet and point source measurements from the two experiments.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: The LABOCA/ACT Survey of Clusters at All Redshifts

We present a multi-wavelength analysis of eleven Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect (SZE)-selected galaxy clusters (ten with new data) from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) southern survey. We have obtained new imaging from the Large APEX Bolometer Camera (345GHz; LABOCA) on the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) telescope, the Australia Telescope Compact Array (2.1GHz; ATCA), and the Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (250, 350, and $500\,\rm\mu m$; SPIRE) on the Herschel Space Observatory. Spatially-resolved 345GHz SZE increments with integrated S/N > 5 are found in six clusters. We compute 2.1GHz number counts as a function of cluster-centric radius and find significant enhancements in the counts of bright sources at projected radii $\theta < \theta_{2500}$. By extrapolating in frequency, we predict that the combined signals from 2.1GHz-selected radio sources and 345GHz-selected SMGs contaminate the 148GHz SZE decrement signal by ~5% and the 345GHz SZE increment by ~18%. After removing radio source and SMG emission from the SZE signals, we use ACT, LABOCA, and (in some cases) new Herschel SPIRE imaging to place constraints on the clusters' peculiar velocities. The sample's average peculiar velocity relative to the cosmic microwave background is $153\pm 383\,\rm km\,s^{-1}$.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, Accepted for Publication in The Astrophysical Journa

Cosmological Parameters from Pre-Planck CMB Measurements

Recent data from the WMAP, ACT and SPT experiments provide precise measurements of the cosmic microwave background temperature power spectrum over a wide range of angular scales. The combination of these observations is well fit by the standard, spatially flat LCDM cosmological model, constraining six free parameters to within a few percent. The scalar spectral index, n_s = 0.9690 +/- 0.0089, is less than unity at the 3.6 sigma level, consistent with simple models of inflation. The damping tail of the power spectrum at high resolution, combined with the amplitude of gravitational lensing measured by ACT and SPT, constrains the effective number of relativistic species to be N_eff = 3.28 +/- 0.40, in agreement with the standard model's three species of light neutrinos.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Two-Season ACTPol Lensing Power Spectrum

We report a measurement of the power spectrum of cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing from two seasons of Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter (ACTPol) CMB data. The CMB lensing power spectrum is extracted from both temperature and polarization data using quadratic estimators. We obtain results that are consistent with the expectation from the best-fit Planck LCDM model over a range of multipoles L=80-2100, with an amplitude of lensing A_lens = 1.06 +/- 0.15 (stat.) +/- 0.06 (sys.) relative to Planck. Our measurement of the CMB lensing power spectrum gives sigma_8 Omega_m^0.25 = 0.643 +/- 0.054; including baryon acoustic oscillation scale data, we constrain the amplitude of density fluctuations to be sigma_8 = 0.831 +/- 0.053. We also update constraints on the neutrino mass sum. We verify our lensing measurement with a number of null tests and systematic checks, finding no evidence of significant systematic errors. This measurement relies on a small fraction of the ACTPol data already taken; more precise lensing results can therefore be expected from the full ACTPol dataset.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, to be submitted to Physical Review

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A Measurement of the Thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect Using the Skewness of the CMB Temperature Distribution

We present a detection of the unnormalized skewness induced by the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect in filtered Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) 148 GHz cosmic microwave background temperature maps. Contamination due to infrared and radio sources is minimized by template subtraction of resolved sources and by constructing a mask using outlying values in the 218 GHz (tSZ-null) ACT maps. We measure = -31 +- 6 \mu K^3 (measurement error only) or +- 14 \mu K^3 (including cosmic variance error) in the filtered ACT data, a 5-sigma detection. We show that the skewness is a sensitive probe of sigma_8, and use analytic calculations and tSZ simulations to obtain cosmological constraints from this measurement. From this signal alone we infer a value of sigma_8= 0.79 +0.03 -0.03 (68 % C.L.) +0.06 -0.06 (95 % C.L.). Our results demonstrate that measurements of non-Gaussianity can be a useful method for characterizing the tSZ effect and extracting the underlying cosmological information.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures. Replaced with version accepted by Phys. Rev. D, with improvements to the likelihood function and the IR source treatment; only minor changes in the result

Detection of the Power Spectrum of Cosmic Microwave Background Lensing by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope

We report the first detection of the gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background through a measurement of the four-point correlation function in the temperature maps made by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. We verify our detection by calculating the levels of potential contaminants and performing a number of null tests. The resulting convergence power spectrum at 2-degree angular scales measures the amplitude of matter density fluctuations on comoving length scales of around 100 Mpc at redshifts around 0.5 to 3. The measured amplitude of the signal agrees with Lambda Cold Dark Matter cosmology predictions. Since the amplitude of the convergence power spectrum scales as the square of the amplitude of the density fluctuations, the 4-sigma detection of the lensing signal measures the amplitude of density fluctuations to 12%.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, replaced title and author list with version accepted by Physical Review Letters. Likelihood code can be downloaded from http://bccp.lbl.gov/~sudeep/ACTLensLike.htm

Evidence for dark energy from the cosmic microwave background alone using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope lensing measurements

For the first time, measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) alone favor cosmologies with $w=-1$ dark energy over models without dark energy at a 3.2-sigma level. We demonstrate this by combining the CMB lensing deflection power spectrum from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope with temperature and polarization power spectra from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. The lensing data break the geometric degeneracy of different cosmological models with similar CMB temperature power spectra. Our CMB-only measurement of the dark energy density $\Omega_\Lambda$ confirms other measurements from supernovae, galaxy clusters and baryon acoustic oscillations, and demonstrates the power of CMB lensing as a new cosmological tool.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; replaced with version accepted by Physical Review Letters, added sentence on models with non-standard primordial power spectr

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Selected Galaxy Clusters at 148 GHz from Three Seasons of Data

[Abridged] We present a catalog of 68 galaxy clusters, of which 19 are new discoveries, detected via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZ) at 148 GHz in the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) survey of 504 square degrees on the celestial equator. A subsample of 48 clusters within the 270 square degree region overlapping SDSS Stripe 82 is estimated to be 90% complete for M_500c > 4.5e14 Msun and 0.15 < z < 0.8. While matched filters are used to detect the clusters, the sample is studied further through a "Profile Based Amplitude Analysis" using a single filter at a fixed \theta_500 = 5.9' angular scale. This new approach takes advantage of the "Universal Pressure Profile" (UPP) to fix the relationship between the cluster characteristic size (R_500) and the integrated Compton parameter (Y_500). The UPP scalings are found to be nearly identical to an adiabatic model, while a model incorporating non-thermal pressure better matches dynamical mass measurements and masses from the South Pole Telescope. A high signal to noise ratio subsample of 15 ACT clusters is used to obtain cosmological constraints. We first confirm that constraints from SZ data are limited by uncertainty in the scaling relation parameters rather than sample size or measurement uncertainty. We next add in seven clusters from the ACT Southern survey, including their dynamical mass measurements based on galaxy velocity dispersions. In combination with WMAP7 these data simultaneously constrain the scaling relation and cosmological parameters, yielding \sigma_8 = 0.829 \pm 0.024 and \Omega_m = 0.292 \pm 0.025. The results include marginalization over a 15% bias in dynamical mass relative to the true halo mass. In an extension to LCDM that incorporates non-zero neutrino mass density, we combine our data with WMAP7+BAO+Hubble constant measurements to constrain \Sigma m_\nu < 0.29 eV (95% C. L.).Comment: 32 pages, 21 figures To appear in J. Cosmology and Astroparticle Physic