4,834 research outputs found
Inhomogeneous reionization and the polarization of the cosmic microwave background
In a universe with inhomogeneous reionization, the ionized patches create a
second order signal in the cosmic microwave background polarization anisotropy.
This signal originates in the coupling of the free electron fluctuation to the
quadruple moment of the temperature anisotropy. We examine the contribution
from a simple inhomogeneous reionization model and find that the signal from
such a process is below the detectable limits of the Planck Surveyor mission.
However t he signal is above the fundamental uncertainty limit from cosmic
variance, so th at a future detection with a high accuracy experiment on
sub-arcminute scales is possible.Comment: 10 pages, 2 eps figures, final version accepted for publication in
ApJ Letter
Removing point sources from CMB maps
For high-precision cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments,
contamination from extragalactic point sources is a major concern. It is
therefore useful to be able to detect and discard point source contaminated
pixels using the map itself. We show that the sensitivity with which this can
be done can often be greatly improved (by factors between 2.5 and 18 for the
upcoming Planck mission) by a customized hi-pass filtering that suppresses
fluctuations due to CMB and diffuse galactic foregrounds. This means that point
source contamination will not severely degrade the cleanest Planck channels
unless current source count estimates are off by more than an order of
magnitude. A catalog of around 40,000 far infra-red sources at 857 GHz may be a
useful by-product of Planck.Comment: 4 pages, with 2 figures included. Minor revisions to match accepted
version. Color figure and links at http://www.sns.ias.edu/~max/cleaning.html
(faster from the US), from http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/~max/cleaning.html
(faster from Europe) or from [email protected], and Angelica's foreground links at
http://www.sns.ias.edu/~angelica/foreground.htm
The Detectability of Departures from the Inflationary Consistency Equation
We study the detectability, given CMB polarization maps, of departures from
the inflationary consistency equation, r \equiv T/S \simeq -5 n_T, where T and
S are the tensor and scalar contributions to the quadrupole variance,
respectively. The consistency equation holds if inflation is driven by a
slowly-rolling scalar field. Departures can be caused by: 1) higher-order terms
in the expansion in slow-roll parameters, 2) quantum loop corrections or 3)
multiple fields. Higher-order corrections in the first two slow-roll parameters
are undetectably small. Loop corrections are detectable if they are nearly
maximal and r \ga 0.1. Large departures (|\Delta n_T| \ga 0.1) can be seen if r
\ga 0.001. High angular resolution can be important for detecting non-zero
r+5n_T, even when not important for detecting non-zero r.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PR
Imprint of Reionization on the Cosmic Microwave Background Bispectrum
We study contributions to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) bispectrum
from non-Gaussianity induced by secondary anisotropies during reionization.
Large-scale structure in the reionized epoch both gravitational lenses CMB
photons and produces Doppler shifts in their temperature from scattering off
electrons in infall. The resulting correlation is potentially observable
through the CMB bispectrum. The second-order Ostriker-Vishniac also couples to
a variety of linear secondary effects to produce a bispectrum. For the
currently favored flat cosmological model with a low matter content and small
optical depth in the reionized epoch \tau \la 0.3, however, these bispectrum
contributions are well below the detection threshold of MAP and at or below
that of Planck, given their cosmic and noise variance limitations. At the upper
end of this range, they can serve as an extra source of noise for measurements
with Planck of either primordial nongaussianity or that induced by the
correlation of gravitational lensing with the integrated Sachs-Wolfe and the
thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects. We include a discussion of the general
properties of the CMB bispectrum, its configuration dependence for the various
effects, and its computation in the Limber approximation and beyond.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures (with emulateapj.sty); submitted to Ap
Interplay between excitation kinetics and reaction-center dynamics in purple bacteria
Photosynthesis is arguably the fundamental process of Life, since it enables
energy from the Sun to enter the food-chain on Earth. It is a remarkable
non-equilibrium process in which photons are converted to many-body excitations
which traverse a complex biomolecular membrane, getting captured and fueling
chemical reactions within a reaction-center in order to produce nutrients. The
precise nature of these dynamical processes -- which lie at the interface
between quantum and classical behaviour, and involve both noise and
coordination -- are still being explored. Here we focus on a striking recent
empirical finding concerning an illumination-driven transition in the
biomolecular membrane architecture of {\it Rsp. Photometricum} purple bacteria.
Using stochastic realisations to describe a hopping rate model for excitation
transfer, we show numerically and analytically that this surprising shift in
preferred architectures can be traced to the interplay between the excitation
kinetics and the reaction center dynamics. The net effect is that the bacteria
profit from efficient metabolism at low illumination intensities while using
dissipation to avoid an oversupply of energy at high illumination intensities.Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in New Journal of
Physic
Probing the equation of state of the early universe with a space laser interferometer
We propose a method to probe the equation of state of the early universe and
its evolution, using the stochastic gravitational wave background from
inflation. A small deviation from purely radiation dominated universe () would be clearly imprinted on the gravitational wave spectrum
due to the nearly scale invariant nature of inflationary
generated waves.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur
Cross-Correlating Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation Fluctuations with Redshift Surveys: Detecting the Signature of Gravitational Lensing
Density inhomogeneities along the line-of-sight distort fluctuations in the
cosmic microwave background. Usually, this effect is thought of as a small
second-order effect that mildly alters the statistics of the microwave
background fluctuations. We show that there is a first-order effect that is
potentially observable if we combine microwave background maps with large
redshift surveys. We introduce a new quantity that measures this lensing
effect, , where T is the microwave
background temperature and is the lensing due to matter in the
region probed by the redshift survey. We show that the expected signal is first
order in the gravitational lensing bending angle, , and find that it should be easily detectable, (S/N) 15-35, if
we combine the Microwave Anisotropy Probe satellite and Sloan Digital Sky
Survey data. Measurements of this cross-correlation will directly probe the
``bias'' factor, the relationship between fluctuations in mass and fluctuations
in galaxy counts.Comment: 13 pages, 4 postscript figures included; Uses aaspp4.sty (AASTeX
v4.0); Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal, Part
Signature of Gravity Waves in Polarization of the Microwave Background
Using spin-weighted decomposition of polarization in the Cosmic Microwave
Background (CMB) we show that a particular combination of Stokes and
parameters vanishes for primordial fluctuations generated by scalar modes, but
does not for those generated by primordial gravity waves. Because of this
gravity wave detection is not limited by cosmic variance as in the case of
temperature fluctuations. We present the exact expressions for various
polarization power spectra, which are valid on any scale. Numerical evaluation
in inflation-based models shows that the expected signal is of the order of 0.5
, which could be directly tested in future CMB experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, RevTeX, matches the accepted version (to appear in
Phys. Rev. Lett.); code available at
http://arcturus.mit.edu:80/~matiasz/CMBFAST/cmbfast.htm
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