The Crab Nebula as a Calibrator for wide-beam Cosmic Microwave Background polarization surveys

Abstract

We analyze the effect of polarized diffuse emission in the calibration of wide-beam mm-wave polarimeters, when using the Crab Nebula as a reference source for both polarized brightness and polarization angle. We show that, for CMB polarization experiments aiming at detecting B-mode in a scenario with a tensor to scalar ratio $r\sim 0.001$, wide (a few degrees in diameter), precise (${\sigma }_Q$ , ${\sigma }_U$ $\sim$ 20 $\mu$$K_{CMB}$ arcmin), high angular resolution ($<\mathrm{FWHM}$) reference maps are needed to properly take into account the effects of diffuse polarized emission and avoid significant bias in the calibration.

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• LiteBIRD: JAXA's new strategic L-class mission for all-sky surveys of cosmic microwave background polarization
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Cited by in corpus (1)

• In-flight polarization angle calibration for LiteBIRD: blind challenge and cosmological implications