Forecast B-modes detection at large scales in presence of noise and foregrounds

Abstract

We investigate the detectability of the primordial CMB polarization B-mode power spectrum on large scales in the presence of instrumental noise and realistic foreground contamination. We have worked out a method to estimate the errors on component separation and to propagate them up to the power spectrum estimation. The performances of our method are illustrated by applying it to the instrumental specifications of the Planck satellite and to the proposed configuration for the next generation CMB polarization experiment COrE. We demonstrate that a proper component separation step is required in order achieve the detection of B-modes on large scales and that the final sensitivity to B-modes of a given experiment is determined by a delicate balance between noise level and residual foregrounds, which depend on the set of frequencies exploited in the CMB reconstruction, on the signal-to-noise of each frequency map, and on our ability to correctly model the spectral behavior of the foreground components. We have produced a flexible software tool that allows the comparison of performances on B-mode detection of different instrumental specifications (choice of frequencies, noise level at each frequency, etc.) as well as of different proposed approaches to component separation.

7 pages, 2 tables, 1 figure, accepted by MNRAS

References in corpus (3)

• Maximum Likelihood algorithm for parametric component separation in CMB experiments
• Maximum likelihood, parametric component separation and CMB B-mode detection in suborbital experiments
• Correlated Component Analysis for diffuse component separation with error estimation on simulated Planck polarization data

Cited by in corpus (14)

• COrE (Cosmic Origins Explorer) A White Paper
• Sensitivity and foreground modelling for large-scale CMB B-mode polarization satellite missions
• Exploring Cosmic Origins with CORE: B-mode Component Separation
• Forecasting performance of CMB experiments in the presence of complex foreground contaminations
• A 3-D model of polarised dust emission in the Milky Way
• SWIPE: a bolometric polarimeter for the Large-Scale Polarization Explorer
• The Simons Observatory: pipeline comparison and validation for large-scale B-modes
• Framework for performance forecasting and optimization of CMB B-mode observations in presence of astrophysical foregrounds
• The C-Band All-Sky Survey (C-BASS): Template Fitting of Diffuse Galactic Microwave Emission in the Northern Sky
• The Large-Scale Polarization Explorer (LSPE)
• Joint Bayesian estimation of tensor and lensing B-modes in the power spectrum of CMB polarization data
• Foreground removal requirements for measuring large-scale CMB B-modes in light of BICEP2
• A Bayesian ILC method for CMB B-mode posterior estimation and reconstruction of primordial gravity wave signal
• Galactic foreground constraints on primordial $B$-mode detection for ground-based experiments