CMB foregrounds - A brief review

Abstract

CMB foregrounds consist of all radiation between the surface of last scattering and the detectors, which can interfere with the cosmological interpretation of CMB data. Fortunately, in temperature (intensity), even though the foregrounds are complex they can relatively easily be mitigated. However, in polarization, diffuse Galactic radiation (synchrotron and thermal dust) can be polarized at a level of >10 % making it more of a challenge. In particular, CMB B-modes, which are a smoking-gun signature of inflation, will be dominated by foregrounds. Component separation will therefore be critical for future CMB polarization missions, requiring many channels covering a wide range of frequencies, to ensure that foreground modelling errors are minimised.

Draft proceedings for the conference Rencontres de Moriond 2016 on cosmology. Invited review talk, 9 pages, 6 figures

Cited by in corpus (5)

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• Clustering of Local Extrema in Planck CMB maps
• Characterization of Extragalactic Point-Sources on E- and B-mode Maps of the CMB Polarization
• Fast map-based simulations of systematics in CMB surveys including effects of the scanning strategy
• Measurements of the diffuse Galactic synchrotron spectral index and curvature from MeerKLASS pilot data