High Galactic latitude polarized emission at 1.4 GHz and implications for cosmic microwave background observations

Abstract

We analyse the polarized emission at 1.4 GHz in a 3x3 deg^2 area at high Galactic latitude (b ~ -40deg). The region, centred in (RA=5h, Dec=-49deg), was observed with the Australia Telescope Compact Array radio-interferometer, whose 3-30 arcmin angular sensitivity range allows the study of scales appropriate for CMB Polarization (CMBP) investigations. The angular behavior of the diffuse emission is analysed through the E- and B-mode power spectra. These follow a power law $C_l^X\propto l^{{\beta }_X}$ with slopes β_E = -1.97 \pm 0.08 and β_B = -1.98 \pm 0.07. The emission is found to be about a factor 25 fainter than in Galactic plane regions. The comparison of the power spectra with other surveys indicates that this area is intermediate between strong and negligible Faraday rotation effects. A similar conclusion can be reached by analysing both the frequency and Galactic latitude behaviors of the diffuse Galactic emission of the 408-1411 MHz Leiden survey data. We present an analysis of the Faraday rotation effects on the polarized power spectra, and find that the observed power spectra can be enhanced by a transfer of power from large to small angular scales. The extrapolation of the spectra to 32 and 90GHz of the CMB window suggests that Galactic synchrotron emission leaves the CMBP E-mode uncontaminated at 32GHz. The level of the contamination at 90GHz is expected to be more than 4 orders of magnitude below the CMBP spectrum. Extrapolating to the relevant angular scales, this region also appears adequate for investigation of the CMBP B-modes for models with tensor/scalar fluctuation power ratio T/S>0.01. We also identify polarized point sources in the field, providing a 9 object list which is complete down to the polarized flux limit of S^p_lim = 2 mJy.

13 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (14)

• First Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Determination of Cosmological Parameters
• An All-Sky Analysis of Polarization in the Microwave Background
• First Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Foreground Emission
• Microwave Background Constraints on Cosmological Parameters
• Foregrounds and Forecasts for the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Measuring Polarization In Cosmic Microwave Background
• Radio polarization from the inner Galaxy at arcminute resolution
• A 1.4 GHz radio continuum and polarization survey at medium Galactic latitudes: II. First section
• Towards a model of full-sky Galactic synchrotron intensity and linear polarisation: a re-analysis of the Parkes data
• Characteristics of the structure in the Galactic polarized radio background at 350 MHz
• The power-law behaviours of angular spectra of polarized Galactic synchrotron
• Polarization angular spectra of Galactic synchrotron emission on arcminute scales
• Polarization observations in a low synchrotron emission field at 1.4 GHz
• A polarized synchrotron template for CMBP experiments after WMAP data

Cited by in corpus (41)

• The star formation history of mass-selected galaxies in the COSMOS field
• Spitzer view on the evolution of star-forming galaxies from z=0 to z~3
• Probing the Coevolution of Supermassive Black Holes and Galaxies Using Gravitationally Lensed Quasar Hosts
• An Ultraviolet-to-Radio Broadband Spectral Atlas of Nearby Galaxies
• The Build-up of the Colour-Magnitude Relation as a Function of Environment
• Deep GALEX Imaging of the HST/COSMOS Field: A First Look at the Morphology of z~0.7 Star-forming Galaxies
• Foregrounds for observations of the cosmological 21 cm line: I. First Westerbork measurements of Galactic emission at 150 MHz in a low latitude field
• The dependence of star formation activity on environment and stellar mass at z~1 from the HiZELS H-alpha survey
• Specific star formation rates to redshift 5 from the FORS Deep Field and the GOODS-S Field
• The contribution of star formation and merging to stellar mass buildup in galaxies
• Considerations in optimizing CMB polarization experiments to constrain inflationary physics
• Interpreting the Evolution of the Size - Luminosity Relation for Disk Galaxies from Redshift 1 to the Present
• The evolution of early and late type galaxies in the COSMOS up to z~1.2
• Clustering properties of BzK-selected galaxies in GOODS-N: environmental quenching and triggering of star formation at z ~ 2
• Population synthesis modelling of luminous infrared galaxies at intermediate redshift
• The evolution of the mass function split by morphology up to redshift 1 in the FORS Deep and the GOODS-S Fields
• Plunging fireworks: Why do infalling galaxies light up on the outskirts of clusters?
• Connecting Transitions in Galaxy Properties to Refueling
• UV+IR Star Formation Rates: Hickson Compact Groups with Swift and Spitzer
• Star Formation in the Bullet Cluster I: The Infrared Luminosity Function and Star Formation Rate
• Making Maps from Planck LFI 30GHz Data
• Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 Early Release Science: Emission-Line Galaxies from Infrared Grism Observations
• Constraining Polarized Foregrounds for EOR Experiments II: Polarization Leakage Simulations in the Avoidance Scheme
• Simulations of Galactic polarized synchrotron emission for Epoch of Reionization observations
• The Fan Region at 1.5 GHz. I: Polarized synchrotron emission extending beyond the Perseus Arm
• The IMACS Cluster Building Survey. III. The Star Formation Histories of Field Galaxies
• Separating polarized cosmological and galactic emissions for CMB B-mode polarization experiments
• The Parkes Galactic Meridian Survey (PGMS): observations and CMB polarization foreground analysis
• A strongly starforming group: three massive galaxies associated with a QSO
• The Star Formation and Nuclear Accretion Histories of Normal Galaxies in the AGES Survey
• 1.4 GHz polarimetric observations of the two fields imaged by the DASI experiment
• Mass-dependent Color Evolution of Field Galaxies Back to z~3 Over the Wide Range of Stellar Mass
• The Global Magneto-Ionic Medium Survey (GMIMS): The brightest polarized region in the Southern sky at 75cm and its implications for Radio Loop II
• Polarized Diffuse Emission at 2.3 GHz in a High Galactic Latitude Area
• Improved Templates for Photometric Redshifts of Submm Sources
• Growing Supermassive Black Holes by Chaotic Accretion
• Deep 1.4-GHz observations of diffuse polarized emission
• Galactic foregrounds and CMB polarization
• Power Spectrum Analysis of Polarized Emission from the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey
• The Homogeneous Properties of Halpha-Selected Galaxies at (0.05<z<0.15)
• Tracing the Mass-Assembly History of Galaxies with Deep Surveys