CMB Optical Depth Measurements: Past, Present, Future

Abstract

The polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is encoded with exactly the same cosmic information as the CMB's temperature anistropy. However, polarization has the additional promise of accurately probing the reionization history of the universe and potentially constraining, or detecting, the primordial background of gravitational waves produced by inflation. We demonstrate that these two CMB polarization goals are mutually compatible. A polarimeter optimized to detect the inflationary gravitational wave background signature in the polarization of the CMB is well situated to detect the signatures of realistic first-light scenarios. We also discuss current results and prospects for future CMB polarization experiments.

15 pages, 9 figures, to appear in New Astronomy Reviews as proceedings of "First Light and Reionization", eds. A. Cooray & E. Barton, Fixed one image which didn't render correctly. Version matches published version

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Observational constraints on Cosmic Reionization
• Studying Reionization with Ly-alpha Emitters
• Imprints of Relic Gravitational Waves in Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
• Impact of reionization on CMB polarization tests of slow-roll inflation
• The Tensor Desert
• Towards a multi-tracer neutrino mass measurement with line-intensity mapping