Improved upper limit on degree-scale CMB B-mode polarization power from the 670 square-degree POLARBEAR survey

Abstract

We report an improved measurement of the degree-scale cosmic microwave background $B$-mode angular-power spectrum over 670 square-degree sky area at 150 GHz with POLARBEAR. In the original analysis of the data, errors in the angle measurement of the continuously rotating half-wave plate, a polarization modulator, caused significant data loss. By introducing an angle-correction algorithm, the data volume is increased by a factor of 1.8. We report a new analysis using the larger data set. We find the measured $B$-mode spectrum is consistent with the $\Lambda$CDM model with Galactic dust foregrounds. We estimate the contamination of the foreground by cross-correlating our data and Planck 143, 217, and 353 GHz measurements, where its spectrum is modeled as a power law in angular scale and a modified blackbody in frequency. We place an upper limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ < 0.33 at 95% confidence level after marginalizing over the foreground parameters.

16 pages, 9 figures, 8 tables, Published in ApJ

References in corpus (6)

• A Joint Analysis of BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck Data
• BICEP / Keck XIII: Improved Constraints on Primordial Gravitational Waves using Planck, WMAP, and BICEP/Keck Observations through the 2018 Observing Season
• Planck intermediate results. XXII. Frequency dependence of thermal emission from Galactic dust in intensity and polarization
• Planck constraints on the tensor-to-scalar ratio
• Design and development of an ambient-temperature continuously-rotating achromatic half-wave plate for CMB polarization modulation on the POLARBEAR-2 experiment
• A cryogenic continuously rotating half-wave plate for the POLARBEAR-2b cosmic microwave background receiver

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Can primordial parity violation explain the observed cosmic birefringence?
• Gravitational wave fossils in nonlinear regime: halo tidal bias and intrinsic alignments from gravitational wave separate universe simulations
• Exploration of the polarization angle variability of the Crab Nebula with POLARBEAR and its application to the search for axion-like particles
• Detecting galaxy-21-cm cross-correlation during reionization
• Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS): 90 GHz Telescope Pointing, Beam Profile, Window Function, and Polarization Performance
• Spectral Distortions from Axion Monodromy Inflation
• Extended Delta-map: a map-based foreground removal method for CMB polarization observations
• Improving Cosmic Birefringence Constraints via Delensing
• ForSE+: Simulating non-Gaussian CMB foregrounds at 3 arcminutes in a stochastic way based on a generative adversarial network
• Characterization of a half-wave plate for cosmic microwave background circular polarization measurement with POLARBEAR
• A measurement of atmospheric circular polarization with POLARBEAR
• Constraints on Anisotropic Cosmic Birefringence from CMB B-mode Polarization
• QUIJOTE-TFGI polarization calibration -- Ground characterization and on-sky validation with Tau A and the Moon