243 research outputs found
Consistency of cosmic microwave background temperature measurements in three frequency bands in the 2500-square-degree SPT-SZ survey
We present an internal consistency test of South Pole Telescope (SPT)
measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropy
using three-band data from the SPT-SZ survey. These measurements are made from
observations of ~2500 deg^2 of sky in three frequency bands centered at 95,
150, and 220 GHz. We combine the information from these three bands into six
semi-independent estimates of the CMB power spectrum (three single-frequency
power spectra and three cross-frequency spectra) over the multipole range 650 <
l < 3000. We subtract an estimate of foreground power from each power spectrum
and evaluate the consistency among the resulting CMB-only spectra. We determine
that the six foreground-cleaned power spectra are consistent with the null
hypothesis, in which the six cleaned spectra contain only CMB power and noise.
A fit of the data to this model results in a chi-squared value of 236.3 for 235
degrees of freedom, and the probability to exceed this chi-squared value is
46%.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figures, current version matches version published in
JCA
The 10 Meter South Pole Telescope
The South Pole Telescope (SPT) is a 10 m diameter, wide-field, offset
Gregorian telescope with a 966-pixel, multi-color, millimeter-wave, bolometer
camera. It is located at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station in Antarctica.
The design of the SPT emphasizes careful control of spillover and scattering,
to minimize noise and false signals due to ground pickup. The key initial
project is a large-area survey at wavelengths of 3, 2 and 1.3 mm, to detect
clusters of galaxies via the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect and to measure the
small-scale angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB).
The data will be used to characterize the primordial matter power spectrum and
to place constraints on the equation of state of dark energy. A
second-generation camera will measure the polarization of the CMB, potentially
leading to constraints on the neutrino mass and the energy scale of inflation.Comment: 47 pages, 14 figures, updated to match version to be published in
PASP 123 903 (May, 2011
A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Damping Tail from the 2500-square-degree SPT-SZ survey
We present a measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature
power spectrum using data from the recently completed South Pole Telescope
Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SPT-SZ) survey. This measurement is made from observations
of 2540 deg of sky with arcminute resolution at GHz, and improves
upon previous measurements using the SPT by tripling the sky area. We report
CMB temperature anisotropy power over the multipole range . We
fit the SPT bandpowers, combined with the seven-year Wilkinson Microwave
Anisotropy Probe (WMAP7) data, with a six-parameter LCDM cosmological model and
find that the two datasets are consistent and well fit by the model. Adding SPT
measurements significantly improves LCDM parameter constraints; in particular,
the constraint on tightens by a factor of 2.7. The impact of
gravitational lensing is detected at , the most significant
detection to date. This sensitivity of the SPT+WMAP7 data to lensing by
large-scale structure at low redshifts allows us to constrain the mean
curvature of the observable universe with CMB data alone to be
. Using the SPT+WMAP7 data, we measure the
spectral index of scalar fluctuations to be in the LCDM
model, a preference for a scale-dependent spectrum with .
The SPT measurement of the CMB damping tail helps break the degeneracy that
exists between the tensor-to-scalar ratio and in large-scale CMB
measurements, leading to an upper limit of (95%,C.L.) in the LCDM+
model. Adding low-redshift measurements of the Hubble constant () and the
baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) feature to the SPT+WMAP7 data leads to
further improvements. The combination of SPT+WMAP7++BAO constrains
in the LCDM model, a detection of , ... [abridged]Comment: 21 pages, 10 figures. Replaced with version accepted by ApJ. Data
products are available at http://pole.uchicago.edu/public/data/story12
A Comparison of Cosmological Parameters Determined from CMB Temperature Power Spectra from the South Pole Telescope and the Planck Satellite
The Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature data are best fit
with a LCDM model that is in mild tension with constraints from other
cosmological probes. The South Pole Telescope (SPT) 2540 SPT-SZ
survey offers measurements on sub-degree angular scales (multipoles ) with sufficient precision to use as an independent check of
the Planck data. Here we build on the recent joint analysis of the SPT-SZ and
Planck data in \citet{hou17} by comparing LCDM parameter estimates using the
temperature power spectrum from both data sets in the SPT-SZ survey region. We
also restrict the multipole range used in parameter fitting to focus on modes
measured well by both SPT and Planck, thereby greatly reducing sample variance
as a driver of parameter differences and creating a stringent test for
systematic errors. We find no evidence of systematic errors from such tests.
When we expand the maximum multipole of SPT data used, we see low-significance
shifts in the angular scale of the sound horizon and the physical baryon and
cold dark matter densities, with a resulting trend to higher Hubble constant.
When we compare SPT and Planck data on the SPT-SZ sky patch to Planck full-sky
data but keep the multipole range restricted, we find differences in the
parameters and . We perform further checks, investigating
instrumental effects and modeling assumptions, and we find no evidence that the
effects investigated are responsible for any of the parameter shifts. Taken
together, these tests reveal no evidence for systematic errors in SPT or Planck
data in the overlapping sky coverage and multipole range and, at most, weak
evidence for a breakdown of LCDM or systematic errors influencing either the
Planck data outside the SPT-SZ survey area or the SPT data at .Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures. Updated 1 figure and expanded on the reasoning
for fixing the affect of lensing on the power spectrum instead of varying
Alen
A Comparison of Maps and Power Spectra Determined from South Pole Telescope and Planck Data
We study the consistency of 150 GHz data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT)
and 143 GHz data from the Planck satellite over the patch of sky covered by the
SPT-SZ survey. We first visually compare the maps and find that the residuals
appear consistent with noise after accounting for differences in angular
resolution and filtering. We then calculate (1) the cross-spectrum between two
independent halves of SPT data, (2) the cross-spectrum between two independent
halves of Planck data, and (3) the cross-spectrum between SPT and Planck data.
We find the three cross-spectra are well-fit (PTE = 0.30) by the null
hypothesis in which both experiments have measured the same sky map up to a
single free calibration parameter---i.e., we find no evidence for systematic
errors in either data set. As a by-product, we improve the precision of the SPT
calibration by nearly an order of magnitude, from 2.6% to 0.3% in power.
Finally, we compare all three cross-spectra to the full-sky Planck power
spectrum and find marginal evidence for differences between the power spectra
from the SPT-SZ footprint and the full sky. We model these differences as a
power law in spherical harmonic multipole number. The best-fit value of this
tilt is consistent among the three cross-spectra in the SPT-SZ footprint,
implying that the source of this tilt is a sample variance fluctuation in the
SPT-SZ region relative to the full sky. The consistency of cosmological
parameters derived from these datasets is discussed in a companion paper.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures. Published in The Astrophysical Journal. Current
arxiv version matches published versio
Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Cluster Profiles Measured with the South Pole Telescope
We present Sunyaev-Zel'dovich measurements of 15 massive X-ray selected
galaxy clusters obtained with the South Pole Telescope. The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich
(SZ) cluster signals are measured at 150 GHz, and concurrent 220 GHz data are
used to reduce astrophysical contamination. Radial profiles are computed using
a technique that takes into account the effects of the beams and filtering. In
several clusters, significant SZ decrements are detected out to a substantial
fraction of the virial radius. The profiles are fit to the beta model and to a
generalized NFW pressure profile, and are scaled and stacked to probe their
average behavior. We find model parameters that are consistent with previous
studies: beta=0.86 and r_core/r_500 = 0.20 for the beta model, and (alpha,
beta, gamma, c_500)=(1.0,5.5,0.5,1.0) for the generalized NFW model. Both
models fit the SPT data comparably well, and both are consistent with the
average SZ profile out to the virial radius. The integrated Compton-y parameter
Y_SZ is computed for each cluster using both model-dependent and
model-independent techniques, and the results are compared to X-ray estimates
of cluster parameters. We find that Y_SZ scales with Y_X and gas mass with low
scatter. Since these observables have been found to scale with total mass, our
results point to a tight mass-observable relation for the SPT cluster survey.Comment: 21 pages, 24 figures, updated to published versio
A CMB lensing mass map and its correlation with the cosmic infrared background
We use a temperature map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) obtained
using the South Pole Telescope at 150 GHz to construct a map of the
gravitational convergence to z ~ 1100, revealing the fluctuations in the
projected mass density. This map shows individual features that are significant
at the ~ 4 sigma level, providing the first image of CMB lensing convergence.
We cross-correlate this map with Herschel/SPIRE maps covering 90 square degrees
at wavelengths of 500, 350, and 250 microns. We show that these
submillimeter-wavelength (submm) maps are strongly correlated with the lensing
convergence map, with detection significances in each of the three submm bands
ranging from 6.7 to 8.8 sigma. We fit the measurement of the cross power
spectrum assuming a simple constant bias model and infer bias factors of
b=1.3-1.8, with a statistical uncertainty of 15%, depending on the assumed
model for the redshift distribution of the dusty galaxies that are contributing
to the Herschel/SPIRE maps.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, to be submitted to ApJ
A Direct Measurement of the Linear Bias of Mid-infrared-selected Quasars at z ap 1 Using Cosmic Microwave Background Lensing
We measure the cross-power spectrum of the projected mass density as traced by the convergence of the cosmic microwave background lensing field from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and a sample of Type 1 and 2 (unobscured and obscured) quasars at langzrang ~ 1 selected with the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, over 2500 deg2. The cross-power spectrum is detected at ≈7σ, and we measure a linear bias b = 1.61 ± 0.22, consistent with clustering analyses. Using an independent lensing map, derived from Planck observations, to measure the cross-spectrum, we find excellent agreement with the SPT analysis. The bias of the combined sample of Type 1 and 2 quasars determined in this work is similar to that previously determined for Type 1 quasars alone; we conclude that obscured and unobscured quasars trace the matter field in a similar way. This result has implications for our understanding of quasar unification and evolution schemes.Peer reviewe
Extragalactic millimeter-wave point source catalog, number counts and statistics from 771 square degrees of the SPT-SZ Survey
We present a point source catalog from 771 square degrees of the South Pole
Telescope Sunyaev Zel'dovich (SPT-SZ) survey at 95, 150, and 220 GHz. We detect
1545 sources above 4.5 sigma significance in at least one band. Based on their
relative brightness between survey bands, we classify the sources into two
populations, one dominated by synchrotron emission from active galactic nuclei,
and one dominated by thermal emission from dust-enshrouded star-forming
galaxies. We find 1238 synchrotron and 307 dusty sources. We cross-match all
sources against external catalogs and find 189 unidentified synchrotron sources
and 189 unidentified dusty sources. The dusty sources without counterparts are
good candidates for high-redshift, strongly lensed submillimeter galaxies. We
derive number counts for each population from 1 Jy down to roughly 9, 5, and 11
mJy at 95, 150, and 220 GHz. We compare these counts with galaxy population
models and find that none of the models we consider for either population
provide a good fit to the measured counts in all three bands. The disparities
imply that these measurements will be an important input to the next generation
of millimeter-wave extragalactic source population models.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Ap
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