Self-Calibration of CMB Polarization Experiments

Abstract

Precision measurements of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, especially experiments seeking to detect the odd-parity "B-modes", have far-reaching implications for cosmology. To detect the B-modes generated during inflation the Flux response and polarization angle of these experiments must be calibrated to exquisite precision. While suitable flux calibration sources abound, polarization angle calibrators are deficient in many respects. Man-made polarized sources are often not located in the antenna's far-field, have spectral properties that are radically different from the CMB's, are cumbersome to implement and may be inherently unstable over the (long) duration these searches require to detect the faint signature of the inflationary epoch. Astrophysical sources suffer from time, frequency and spatial variability, are not visible from all CMB observatories, and none are understood with sufficient accuracy to calibrate future CMB polarimeters seeking to probe inflationary energy scales of $10^{15}$ GeV. CMB $TB$ and $EB$ modes, expected to identically vanish in the standard cosmological model, can be used to calibrate CMB polarimeters. By enforcing the observed $EB$ and $TB$ power spectra to be consistent with zero, CMB polarimeters can be calibrated to levels not possible with man-made or astrophysical sources. All of this can be accomplished without any loss of observing time using a calibration source which is spectrally identical to the CMB B-modes. The calibration procedure outlined here can be used for any CMB polarimeter.

References in corpus (24)

• Seven-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• Statistics of Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization
• Signature of Gravity Waves in Polarization of the Microwave Background
• A Probe of Primordial Gravity Waves and Vorticity
• Chern-Simons Modified General Relativity
• Cosmological Signature of New Parity-Violating Interactions
• Benchmark Parameters for CMB Polarization Experiments
• Measurement of Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Power Spectra from Two Years of BICEP Data
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: a measurement of the primordial power spectrum
• CMB Polarization Systematics Due to Beam Asymmetry: Impact on Inflationary Science
• How to De-Rotate the Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization
• Second Season QUIET Observations: Measurements of the CMB Polarization Power Spectrum at 95 GHz
• Measurement of the Crab nebula polarization at 90 GHz as a calibrator for CMB experiments
• De-Rotation of the Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization: Full-Sky Formalism
• Characterization of the BICEP Telescope for High-Precision Cosmic Microwave Background Polarimetry
• Constraining a spatially dependent rotation of the Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization
• QUaD: A High-Resolution Cosmic Microwave Background Polarimeter
• CMB Polarization Systematics Due to Beam Asymmetry: Impact on Cosmological Birefringence
• Primordial B-mode Diagnostics and Self Calibrating the CMB Polarization
• Revealing Cosmic Rotation
• An Instrument for Investigating the Large Angular Scale Polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Characterization of the Millimeter-Wave Polarization of Centaurus A with QUaD
• 3C 286: a bright, compact, stable, and highly polarized calibrator for millimeter-wavelength observations
• Absolute polarization angle calibration using polarized diffuse Galactic emission observed by BICEP

Cited by in corpus (83)

• BICEP2 I: Detection Of B-mode Polarization at Degree Angular Scales
• A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background B-Mode Polarization Power Spectrum at Sub-Degree Scales with POLARBEAR
• New Extraction of the Cosmic Birefringence from the Planck 2018 Polarization Data
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Power Spectra at 98 and 150 GHz
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: The polarization-sensitive ACTPol instrument
• BICEP2 II: Experiment and Three-Year Data Set
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Two-Season ACTPol Spectra and Parameters
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: CMB Polarization at $200<\ell <9000$
• New physics from the polarised light of the cosmic microwave background
• Cosmic Birefringence from Planck Data Release 4
• A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background $B$-Mode Polarization Power Spectrum at Sub-Degree Scales from 2 years of POLARBEAR Data
• Finding the chiral gravitational wave background of an axion-SU(2) inflationary model using CMB observations and laser interferometers
• A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Lensing Potential and Power Spectrum from 500 deg${}^2$ of SPTpol Temperature and Polarization Data
• POLARBEAR Constraints on Cosmic Birefringence and Primordial Magnetic Fields
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Constraints on Cosmic Birefringence
• A Measurement of the Degree Scale CMB B-mode Angular Power Spectrum with POLARBEAR
• Searching for Anisotropic Cosmic Birefringence with Polarization Data from SPTpol
• CMB weak-lensing beyond the Born approximation: a numerical approach
• The Origin of Parity Violation in Polarized Dust Emission and Implications for Cosmic Birefringence
• Self-Calibration of BICEP1 Three-Year Data and Constraints on Astrophysical Polarization Rotation
• BICEP2 III: Instrumental Systematics
• Degree-Scale CMB Polarization Measurements from Three Years of BICEP1 Data
• BICEP2 / Keck Array IX: New Bounds on Anisotropies of CMB Polarization Rotation and Implications for Axion-Like Particles and Primordial Magnetic Fields
• Future CMB constraints on cosmic birefringence and implications for fundamental physics
• Optimal CMB Lensing Reconstruction and Parameter Estimation with SPTpol Data
• Results from the Atacama B-mode Search (ABS) Experiment
• Is cosmic birefringence due to dark energy or dark matter? A tomographic approach
• BICEP2/Keck Array IV: Optical Characterization and Performance of the BICEP2 and Keck Array Experiments
• Absolute calibration of the polarisation angle for future CMB $B$-mode experiments from current and future measurements of the Crab nebula
• Precision Tests of Parity Violation Over Cosmological Distances
• POLOCALC: a Novel Method to Measure the Absolute Polarization Orientation of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Fluctuations of cosmological birefringence and the effect on CMB B-mode polarization
• The Simons Observatory: gain, bandpass and polarization-angle calibration requirements for B-mode searches
• Planck 2018 constraints on anisotropic birefringence and its cross-correlation with CMB anisotropy
• A CubeSat for Calibrating Ground-Based and Sub-Orbital Millimeter-Wave Polarimeters (CalSat)
• Redshift evolution of cosmic birefringence in CMB anisotropies
• Determination of miscalibrated polarization angles from observed CMB and foreground $EB$ power spectra: Application to partial-sky observation
• Foreground-Induced Biases in CMB Polarimeter Self-Calibration
• Cosmic birefringence tomography and calibration-independence with reionization signals in the CMB
• Probing cosmic birefringence with polarized Sunyaev-Zel'dovich tomography
• Planck intermediate results. XLIX. Parity-violation constraints from polarization data
• Constraints on cosmological birefringence from Planck and Bicep2/Keck data
• Magnetic Misalignment of Interstellar Dust Filaments
• Cosmic Polarization Rotation: an Astrophysical Test of Fundamental Physics
• In-flight polarization angle calibration for LiteBIRD: blind challenge and cosmological implications
• Recovery of Large Angular Scale CMB Polarization for Instruments Employing Variable-delay Polarization Modulators
• Probing Axions through Tomography of Anisotropic Cosmic Birefringence
• Testing CPT Symmetry with Current and Future CMB Measurements
• Constraints on axion-like polarization oscillations in the cosmic microwave background with POLARBEAR
• Instrumental systematics biases in CMB lensing reconstruction: a simulation-based assessment
• New constraints on cosmic polarization rotation from the ACTPol cosmic microwave background B-Mode polarization observation and the BICEP2 constraint update
• An efficient probe of the cosmological CPT violation
• CMB Mode Coupling with Isotropic Polarization Rotation
• Determination of Polarization Angles in CMB Experiments and Application to CMB Component Separation Analyses
• Characterising cosmic birefringence in the presence of galactic foregrounds and instrumental systematic effects
• The Cosmic Microwave Background And Pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone Bosons: Searching For Lorentz Violations In The Cosmos
• New Constraints on Cosmic Polarization Rotation from B-Mode Polarization in Cosmic Microwave Background
• Impact of half-wave plate systematics on the measurement of cosmic birefringence from CMB polarization
• A New Solution for the Observed Isotropic Cosmic Birefringence Angle and its Implications for the Anisotropic Counterpart through a Boltzmann Approach
• Detecting chiral gravity with the pure pseudospectrum reconstruction of the cosmic microwave background polarized anisotropies
• The Simons Observatory: A fully remote controlled calibration system with a sparse wire grid for cosmic microwave background telescopes
• Reconstructing Cosmic Polarization Rotation with ResUNet-CMB
• Simultaneous determination of the cosmic birefringence and miscalibrated polarisation angles from CMB experiments
• Absolute reference for microwave polarization experiments -- The COSMOCal project and its proof of concept
• Computing Microwave Background Polarization Power Spectra from Cosmic Birefringence
• Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS): 90 GHz Telescope Pointing, Beam Profile, Window Function, and Polarization Performance
• Primordial Gravitational Waves Measurements and Anisotropies of CMB Polarization Rotation
• Detecting the tensor-to-scalar ratio with the pure pseudospectrum reconstruction of $B$-mode
• Half-wave Plates for the Spider Cosmic Microwave Background Polarimeter
• Simultaneous determination of the cosmic birefringence and miscalibrated polarization angles II: Including cross frequency spectra
• Systematic Effects in Interferometric Observations of the CMB Polarization
• Design and characterization of a ground-based absolute polarization calibrator for use with polarization sensitive CMB experiments
• PROTOCALC, A W-band polarized calibrator for CMB Telescopes: application to Simons Observatory and CLASS
• The Simons Observatory: Beam characterization for the Small Aperture Telescopes
• Polarization Calibration of the BICEP3 CMB polarimeter at the South Pole
• Using the Crab Nebula as a high precision calibrator for Cosmic Microwave Background polarimeters
• Constraining cosmic polarization rotation and implications for primordial B-modes
• Modeling optical systematics for the Taurus CMB experiment
• Polarization angle requirements for CMB B-mode experiments. Application to the LiteBIRD satellite
• Forecasts of constraining isotropic cosmic birefringence on AliCPT-1
• High-precision polarization measurements with Lumped Element Kinetic Inductance Detectors
• Systematic effects on lensing reconstruction from a patchwork of CMB polarization maps
• Recent results and perspectives on cosmology and fundamental physics from microwave surveys