Residual Foreground Contamination Research Articles

Forecast of Foreground Cleaning Strategies for AliCPT-1

We report the test results of several independent foreground cleaning pipelines used in the Ali CMB Polarization Telescope experiment (AliCPT-1), a high-altitude cosmic microwave background (CMB) imager in the Northern Hemisphere with thousands of detectors dedicated to the search for a primordial CMB polarization B-mode signature. Based on simulated data from four detector modules and a single season of observation, which we refer to as Data Challenge 1 (DC1), we employ different and independent pipelines to examine the robustness and effectiveness of estimates on foreground parameters and primordial B-mode detection. The foreground cleaning strategies used in the pipelines include the parametric method of template fitting (TF) and the nonparametric methods of constrained internal linear combination (cILC), analytical blind separation (ABS), and generalized least squares (GLS). We examine the impact of possible foreground residuals on the estimate of the CMB tensor-to-scalar ratio (r) for each pipeline by changing the contamination components in the simulated maps and varying the foreground models and sky patches for various tests. According to the DC1 data with the simulation input value r true = 0.023, the foreground residual contamination levels in the TF/ABS/cILC/GLS pipelines are well within the corresponding statistical errors at the 2σ level. Furthermore, by utilizing the tension estimator, which helps identify significant residual foreground contamination in the detection of the primordial B-mode signal by quantifying the discrepancy between various r measurements, we conclude that the presence of small foreground residuals does not lead to any significant inconsistency in the estimation of r.

Optimization of foreground moment deprojection for semi-blind CMB polarization reconstruction

Upcoming Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments, aimed at measuring primordial CMB polarization B-modes, require exquisite control of instrumental systematics and Galactic foreground contamination. Blind minimum-variance techniques, like the Needlet Internal Linear Combination (NILC), have proven effective in reconstructing the CMB polarization signal and mitigating foregrounds and systematics across diverse sky models without suffering from foreground mismodelling errors. Still, residual foreground contamination from NILC may bias the recovered CMB polarization at large angular scales when confronted with the most complex foreground scenarios.By adding constraints to NILC to deproject statistical moments of the Galactic emission, the Constrained Moment ILC (cMILC) method has been demonstrated to further enhance foreground subtraction, albeit with an associated increase in overall noise variance. Faced with this trade-off between foreground bias reduction and overall variance minimization, there is still no recipe on which moments to deproject and which are better suited for blind variance minimization. To address this, we introduce the optimized cMILC (ocMILC) pipeline, which performs full automated optimization of the required number and set of foreground moments to deproject, pivot parameter values, and deprojection coefficients across the sky and angular scales, depending on the actual sky complexity, available frequency coverage, and experiment sensitivity. The optimal number of moments for deprojection, before paying significant noise penalty, is determined through a data diagnosis inspired by the Generalized NILC (GNILC) method.Validated on B-mode simulations of the PICO space mission concept with four challenging foreground models, ocMILC exhibits lower Galactic foreground contamination compared to NILC and cMILC at all angular scales, with limited noise penalty. This multi-layer optimization enables the ocMILC pipeline to achieve unbiased posteriors of the tensor-to-scalar ratio, regardless of foreground complexity.

Multiclustering needlet ILC for CMB B-mode component separation

ABSTRACT The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) primordial B-mode signal is predicted to be much lower than the polarized Galactic emission (foregrounds) in any region of the sky pointing to the need for sophisticated component separation methods. Among them, the blind Needlet Internal Linear Combination (NILC) has great relevance given our current poor knowledge of the B-mode foregrounds. However, the expected level of spatial variability of the foreground spectral properties complicates the NILC subtraction of the Galactic contamination. We therefore propose a novel extension of the NILC approach, the Multiclustering NILC (MC-NILC), which performs NILC variance minimization on separate regions of the sky (clusters) properly chosen to have similar spectral properties of the B-mode Galactic emission within them. Clusters are identified thresholding either the ratio of simulated foregrounds-only B modes (ideal case) or the one of cleaned templates of Galactic emission obtained from realistic simulations. In this work we present an application of MC-NILC to the future LiteBIRD satellite, which targets the observation of both reionization and recombination peaks of the primordial B-mode angular power spectrum with a total error on the tensor-to-scalar ratio δr < 0.001. We show that MC-NILC provides a CMB solution with residual foreground and noise contamination that is significantly lower than the NILC one and the primordial signal targeted by LiteBIRD at all angular scales for the ideal case and at the reionization peak for a realistic ratio. Thus, MC-NILC will represent a powerful method to mitigate B-mode foregrounds for future CMB polarization experiments.

CONCERTO: Extracting the power spectrum of the [CII] emission line

Context. CONCERTO is the first experiment to perform a [CII] line intensity mapping (LIM) survey on the COSMOS field to target z > 5.2. Measuring the [CII] angular power spectrum allows us to study the role of dusty star-forming galaxies in the star formation history during the epochs of Reionization and post-Reionization. The main obstacle to this measurement is the contamination by bright foregrounds: the dust continuum emission and atomic and molecular lines from foreground galaxies at z ≲ 3. Aims. We evaluate our ability to retrieve the [CII] signal in mock observations of the sky using the Simulated Infrared Dusty Extragalactic Sky (SIDES), which covers the mid-infrared to millimetre range. We also measure the impact of field-to-field variance on the residual foreground contamination. Methods. We compared two methods for dealing with the dust continuum emission from galaxies (i.e. the cosmic infrared background fluctuations): the standard principal component analysis (PCA) and the asymmetric re-weighted penalized least-squares (arPLS) method. For line interlopers, the strategy relies on masking low-redshift galaxies using the instrumental beam profile and external catalogues. As we do not have observations of CO or deep-enough classical CO proxies (such as LIR), we relied on the COSMOS stellar mass catalogue, which we demonstrate to be a reliable CO proxy for masking. To measure the angular power spectrum of masked data, we adapted the P of K EstimatoR (POKER) from cosmic infrared background studies and discuss its use on LIM data. Results. The arPLS method achieves a reduction in the cosmic infrared background fluctuations to a sub-dominant level of the [CII] power at z ∼ 7, a factor of > 70 below our fiducial [CII] model. When using the standard PCA, this factor is only 0.7 at this redshift. The masking lowers the power amplitude of line contamination down to 2 × 10−2 Jy2 sr−1. This residual level is dominated by faint undetected sources that are not clustered around the detected (and masked) sources. For our [CII] model, this results in a detection at z = 5.2 with a power ratio [CII]/(residual interlopers) = 62 ± 32 for a 22% area survey loss. However, at z = 7, [CII]/(residual interlopers) = 2.0 ± 1.4, due to the weak contrast between [CII] and the residual line contamination. Thanks to the large area covered by SIDES-Uchuu, we show that the power amplitude of line residuals varies by 12–15% for z = 5.2 − 7, which is less than the field-to-field variance affecting [CII] power spectra. Conclusions. We present an end-to-end simulation of the extragalactic foreground removal that we ran to detect the [CII] at high redshift via its angular power spectrum. We show that cosmic infrared background fluctuations are not a limiting foreground for [CII] LIM. On the contrary, the CO and [CI] line contamination severely limits our ability to accurately measure the [CII] angular power spectrum at z ≳ 7.

The BINGO project

Context.Observing the neutral hydrogen distribution across the Universe via redshifted 21 cm line intensity mapping constitutes a powerful probe for cosmology. However, the redshifted 21 cm signal is obscured by the foreground emission from our Galaxy and other extragalactic foregrounds. This paper addresses the capabilities of the BINGO survey to separate such signals.Aims.We show that the BINGO instrumental, optical, and simulations setup is suitable for component separation, and that we have the appropriate tools to understand and control foreground residuals. Specifically, this paper looks in detail at the different residuals left over by foreground components, shows that a noise-corrected spectrum is unbiased, and shows that we understand the remaining systematic residuals by analyzing nonzero contributions to the three-point function.Methods.We use the generalized needlet internal linear combination, which we apply to sky simulations of the BINGO experiment for each redshift bin of the survey. We use binned estimates of the bispectrum of the maps to assess foreground residuals left over after component separation in the final map.Results.We present our recovery of the redshifted 21 cm signal from sky simulations of the BINGO experiment, including foreground components. We test the recovery of the 21 cm signal through the angular power spectrum at different redshifts, as well as the recovery of its non-Gaussian distribution through a bispectrum analysis. We find that non-Gaussianities from the original foreground maps can be removed down to, at least, the noise limit of the BINGO survey with such techniques.Conclusions.Our component separation methodology allows us to subtract the foreground contamination in the BINGO channels down to levels below the cosmological signal and the noise, and to reconstruct the 21 cm power spectrum for different redshift bins without significant loss at multipoles 20 ≲ ℓ ≲ 500. Our bispectrum analysis yields strong tests of the level of the residual foreground contamination in the recovered 21 cm signal, thereby allowing us to both optimize and validate our component separation analysis.

Prospects for measuring dark energy with 21 cm intensity mapping experiments

Using the 21 cm intensity mapping (IM) technique can efficiently perform large-scale neutral hydrogen (HI) surveys, and this method has great potential for measuring dark-energy parameters. Some 21 cm IM experiments aiming at measuring dark energy in the redshift range of 0<z<3 have been proposed and performed, in which the typical ones using single-dish mode include e.g., BINGO, FAST, and SKA1-MID, and those using interferometric mode include e.g., HIRAX, CHIME, and Tianlai. In this work, we make a forecast for these typical 21 cm IM experiments on their capability of measuring parameters of dark energy. We find that the interferometers have great advantages in constraining cosmological parameters. In particular, the Tianlai cylinder array alone can achieve the standard of precision cosmology for the ΛCDM model (i.e., the precision of parameters is better than 1%). However, for constraining dynamical dark energy, we find that SKA1-MID performs very well. We show that the simulated 21 cm IM data can break the parameter degeneracies inherent in the CMB data, and CMB+SKA1-MID offers σ(w)=0.013 in the wCDM model, and σ(w 0)=0.080 and σ(w a)=0.25 in the CPL model. Compared with CMB+BAO+SN, Tianlai can provide tighter constraints in ΛCDM and wCDM, but looser constraints (tighter than CMB+BAO) in CPL, and the combination CMB+BAO+SN+Tianlai gives σ(w)=0.013, σ(w 0)=0.055, and σ(w a)=0.13. In addition, it is found that the synergy of FAST (0<z<0.35)+SKA1-MID (0.35<z<0.77)+Tianlai (0.77<z<2.55) offers a very promising survey strategy. Finally, we find that the residual foreground contamination amplitude has a considerable impact on constraint results. We show that in the future 21 cm IM experiments will provide a powerful probe for exploring the nature of dark energy.

Constraining cosmology with a new all-sky Compton parameter map from the Planck PR4 data

ABSTRACT We constructed a new all-sky Compton parameter map (y-map) of the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (tSZ) effect from the 100–857 GHz frequency channel maps delivered within the Planck data release 4. The improvements in terms of noise and systematic effects translated into a y-map with a noise level smaller by ∼7 per cent compared to the maps released in 2015, and with significantly reduced survey stripes. The produced 2020 y-map is also characterized by residual foreground contamination, mainly due to thermal dust emission at large angular scales and to cosmic infrared background and extragalactic point sources at small angular scales. Using the new Planck data, we computed the tSZ angular power spectrum and found that the tSZ signal dominates the y-map in the multipole range, 60 &amp;lt; ℓ &amp;lt; 600. We performed the cosmological analysis with the tSZ angular power spectrum and found $S_8 = 0.764 \, _{-0.018}^{+0.015} \, (stat) \, _{-0.016}^{+0.031} \, (sys)$, including systematic uncertainties from a hydrostatic mass bias and pressure profile model. The S8 value may differ by ±0.016 depending on the hydrostatic mass bias model and by +0.021 depending on the pressure profile model used for the analysis. The obtained value is fully consistent with recent Kilo-Degree Survey and Dark Energy Survey weak-lensing observations. While our result is slightly lower than the Planck CMB one, it is consistent with the latter within 2σ.

Peeling off foregrounds with the constrained moment ILC method to unveil primordial CMB B modes

ABSTRACT Galactic foregrounds are the main obstacle to observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode polarization. In addition to obscuring the inflationary B-mode signal by several orders of magnitude, Galactic foregrounds have non-trivial spectral signatures that are partially unknown and distorted by averaging effects along the line of sight, within the pixel/beam window, and by various analysis choices (e.g. spherical harmonic transforms and filters). Statistical moment expansion methods provide a powerful tool for modelling the effective Galactic foreground emission resulting from these averaging effects in CMB observations, while blind component separation treatments can handle unknown foregrounds. In this work, we combine these two approaches to develop a new semiblind component separation method at the intersection of parametric and blind methods, called constrained moment ILC (cMILC). This method adds several constraints to the standard ILC method to deproject the main statistical moments of the Galactic foreground emission. Applications to maps are performed in needlet space and when compared to the NILC method, this helps in significantly reducing residual foreground contamination (bias, variance, and skewness) in the reconstructed CMB B-mode map, power spectrum, and tensor-to-scalar ratio. We consider sky simulations for experimental settings similar to those of LiteBIRD and PICO, illustrating which trade-offs between residual foreground biases and degradation of the constraint on r can be expected within the new cMILC framework. We also outline several directions that require more work in preparation for the coming analysis challenges.

Testing for directionality in the Planck polarization and lensing data

ABSTRACT In order to better analyse the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which is dominated by emission from our Galaxy, we need tools that can detect residual foregrounds in cleaned CMB maps. Galactic foregrounds introduce statistical anisotropy and directionality to the polarization pseudo-vectors of the CMB, which can be investigated by using the $\mathcal {D}$ statistic of Bunn and Scott. This statistic is rapidly computable and capable of investigating a broad range of data products for directionality. We demonstrate the application of this statistic to detecting foregrounds in polarization maps by analysing the uncleaned Planck 2018 frequency maps. For the Planck 2018 CMB maps, we find no evidence for residual foreground contamination. In order to examine the sensitivity of the $\mathcal {D}$ statistic, we add a varying fraction of the polarized thermal dust and synchrotron foreground maps to the CMB maps and show the per cent-level foreground contamination that would be detected with 95 per cent confidence. We also demonstrate application of the $\mathcal {D}$ statistic to another data product by analysing the gradient of the minimum-variance CMB lensing potential map (i.e. the deflection angle) for directionality. We find no excess directionality in the lensing potential map when compared to the simulations provided by the Planck Collaboration.

Impact of SZ cluster residuals in CMB maps and CMB–LSS cross-correlations

Residual foreground contamination in cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps, such as the residual contamination from thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect in the direction of galaxy clusters, can bias the cross-correlation measurements between CMB and large-scale structure optical surveys. It is thus essential to quantify those residuals and, if possible, to null out SZ cluster residuals in CMB maps. We quantify for the first time the amount of SZ cluster contamination in the released Planck 2015 CMB maps through (i) the stacking of CMB maps in the direction of the clusters, and (ii) the computation of cross-correlation power spectra between CMB maps and the SDSS-IV large-scale structure data. Our cross-power spectrum analysis yields a $30\sigma$ detection at the cluster scale ($\ell=1500-2500$) and a $39\sigma$ detection on larger scales ($\ell=500-1500$) due to clustering of SZ clusters, giving an overall $54\sigma$ detection of SZ cluster residuals in the Planck CMB maps. The Planck 2015 NILC CMB map is shown to have $44\pm4\%$ of thermal SZ foreground emission left in it. Using the 'Constrained ILC' component separation technique, we construct an alternative Planck CMB map, the 2D-ILC map, which is shown to have negligible SZ contamination, at the cost of being slightly more contaminated by Galactic foregrounds and noise. We also discuss the impact of the SZ residuals in CMB maps on the measurement of the ISW effect, which is shown to be negligible based on our analysis.

The cross-correlation between 21 cm intensity mapping maps and the Lyα forest in the post-reionization era

We investigate the cross-correlation signal between 21cm intensity mapping maps and the Lyα forest in the fully non-linear regime using state-of-the-art hydrodynamic simulations. The cross-correlation signal between the Lyα forest and 21cm maps can provide a coherent and comprehensive picture of the neutral hydrogen (HI) content of our Universe in the post-reionization era, probing both its mass content and volume distribution. We compute the auto-power spectra of both fields together with their cross-power spectrum at z = 2.4 and find that on large scales the fields are completely anti-correlated. This anti-correlation arises because regions with high (low) 21cm emission, such as those with a large (low) concentration of damped Lyα systems, will show up as regions with low (high) transmitted flux. We find that on scales smaller than k ≃ 0.2 hMpc−1 the cross-correlation coefficient departs from −1, at a scale where non-linearities show up. We use the anisotropy of the power spectra in redshift-space to determine the values of the bias and of the redshift-space distortion parameters of both fields. We find that the errors on the value of the cosmological and astrophysical parameters could decrease by 30% when adding data from the cross-power spectrum, in a conservative analysis. Our results point out that linear theory is capable of reproducing the shape and amplitude of the cross-power up to rather non-linear scales. Finally, we find that the 21cm-Lyα cross-power spectrum can be detected by combining data from a BOSS-like survey together with 21cm intensity mapping observations by SKA1-MID with a S/N ratio higher than 3 in k∊[0.06,1] hMpc−1. We emphasize that while the shape and amplitude of the 21cm auto-power spectrum can be severely affected by residual foreground contamination, cross-power spectra will be less sensitive to that and therefore can be used to identify systematics in the 21cm maps.

Planck2015 results

We have constructed all-sky Compton parameters maps, y-maps, of the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (tSZ) effect by applying specifically tailored component separation algorithms to the 30 to 857 GHz frequency channel maps from the Planck satellite. These reconstructed y-maps are delivered as part of the Planck 2015 release. The y-maps are characterized in terms of noise properties and residual foreground contamination, mainly thermal dust emission at large angular scales, and cosmic infrared background and extragalactic point sources at small angular scales. Specific masks are defined to minimize foreground residuals and systematics. Using these masks, we compute the y-map angular power spectrum and higher order statistics. From these we conclude that the y-map is dominated by tSZ signal in the multipole range, 20 <ℓ< 600. We compare the measured tSZ power spectrum and higher order statistics to various physically motivated models and discuss the implications of our results in terms of cluster physics and cosmology.

Upper limits on the 21 cm power spectrum at z = 5.9 from quasar absorption line spectroscopy

Abstract We present upper limits on the 21 cm power spectrum at z = 5.9 calculated from the model-independent limit on the neutral fraction of the intergalactic medium of $x_{{\rm H\,\small {I}}} &amp;lt; 0.06 + 0.05\ (1\sigma )$ derived from dark pixel statistics of quasar absorption spectra. Using 21CMMC, a Markov chain Monte Carlo Epoch of Reionization analysis code, we explore the probability distribution of 21 cm power spectra consistent with this constraint on the neutral fraction. We present 99 per cent confidence upper limits of Δ2(k) &amp;lt; 10–20 mK2 over a range of k from 0.5 to 2.0 h Mpc−1, with the exact limit dependent on the sampled k mode. This limit can be used as a null test for 21 cm experiments: a detection of power at z = 5.9 in excess of this value is highly suggestive of residual foreground contamination or other systematic errors affecting the analysis.

Residual foreground contamination in the WMAP data

We have studied whether there is any residual foreground contamination in the foreground reduced WMAP-7 data for the differential assemblies (DAs) Q, V and W. We have calculated the correlation between the foreground map, from which long wavelength correlations have been subtracted, and the foreground reduced map for each DA. We have found positive correlations for all the channels. The statistical significance of the resulting values has been tested by comparing with correlations between the cleaned CMB maps and 1000 simulated Gaussian maps to which instrumental effects have been added. We have found high statistical significance of the observed correlations, implying the presence of residual contamination in the cleaned data, and found that, for Q and V channels, a large fraction of the contamination comes from pixels, where the foreground maps have positive values larger than three times its rms value, which shows the presence of unresolved point sources that contribute significantly to the contamination.

Residual foreground contamination in the WMAP data and bias in non-Gaussianity estimation

We analyze whether there is any residual foreground contamination inthe cleaned WMAP 7 years data for the differentialassemblies, Q, V and W. We calculate the correlation between theforeground map, from which long wavelength correlations have beensubtracted, and the foreground reduced map for each differentialassembly after applying the Galaxy and point sources masks. We find positive correlations forall the differential assemblies, with high statistical significance.For Q and V, we find that a large fraction of thecontamination comes frompixels where the foreground maps have positive values larger thanthree times the rms values. These findings imply the presence ofresidual contamination from Galactic emissions and unresolved pointsources. We redo the analysis after masking the extended point sourcescataloque of Scodeller et al. [7] and find a drop in the correlation and corresponding significancevalues. To quantify the effect of the residualcontamination on the search for primordial non-Gaussianity in theCMB we add estimated contaminant fraction to simulatedGaussian CMB maps and calculate the characteristic non-Gaussiandeviation shapes of Minkowski Functionals that arise due to thecontamination. We find remarkable agreement of these deviation shapeswith those measured from WMAP data, which imply that a major fractionof the observed non-Gaussian deviation comes from residual foregroundcontamination. We also compute non-Gaussian deviations of MinkowskiFunctionals after applying the point sources mask of Scodeller et al. and find a decrease in the overall amplitudes of the deviationswhich is consistent with a decrease in the level of contamination.

MODELING EXTRAGALACTIC FOREGROUNDS AND SECONDARIES FOR UNBIASED ESTIMATION OF COSMOLOGICAL PARAMETERS FROM PRIMARY COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND ANISOTROPY

Using the latest physical modeling and constrained by the most recent data, we develop a phenomenological parameterized model of the contributions to intensity and polarization maps at millimeter wavelengths from external galaxies and Sunyaev-Zeldovich effects. We find such modeling to be necessary for estimation of cosmological parameters from Planck data. For example, ignoring the clustering of the infrared background would result in a bias in n_s of 7 sigma. We show that the simultaneous marginalization over a full foreground model can eliminate such biases, while increasing the statistical uncertainty in cosmological parameters by less than 20%. The small increases in uncertainty can be significantly reduced with the inclusion of higher-resolution ground-based data. The multi-frequency analysis we employ involves modeling 46 total power spectra and marginalization over 17 foreground parameters. We show that we can also reduce the data to a best estimate of the CMB power spectra, and just two principal components (with constrained amplitudes) describing residual foreground contamination.

A FOREGROUND-CLEANED COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND MAP FROM NON-GAUSSIANITY MEASUREMENT

In this paper we present a new method to estimate a foreground cleaned Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) map at a resolution of $1^\circ$ by minimizing the non-Gaussian properties of the cleaned map which arise dominantly due to diffuse foreground emission components from the Milky Way. We employ simple kurtosis statistic as the measure of non-Gaussian properties and perform a linear combination of 5 frequency maps provided by Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) in its 7 year data release in such a way that the cleaned map has a minimum kurtosis which leads to a non-Gaussianity minimized, foreground cleaned CMB map. We validate the method by performing Monte-Carlo simulations. To minimize any residual foreground contamination from the cleaned map we flag out region near the galactic plane based upon results from simulations. Outside the masked region our new estimate of CMB map matches well with the WMAP's ILC map. A simple pseudo-$C_l$ based CMB TT power spectrum derived from the non-gaussianity minimized map reproduces the earlier results of WMAP's power spectrum. {\it An important advantage of the method is that it does not introduce any negative bias in angular power spectrum in low multipole regime, unlike usual ILC method.} Comparing our results with the previously published results we argue that CMB results are robust with respect to specific foreground removal algorithms employed.

Estimating the tensor-to-scalar ratio and the effect of residual foreground contamination

We consider future balloon-borne and ground-based suborbital experiments designed to search for inflationary gravitational waves, and investigate the impact of residual foregrounds that remain in the estimated cosmic microwave background maps. This is achieved by propagating foreground modelling uncertainties from the component separation, under the assumption of a spatially uniform foreground frequency scaling, through to the power spectrum estimates, and up to measurement of the tensor to scalar ratio in the parameter estimation step. We characterize the error covariance due to subtracted foregrounds, and find it to be subdominant compared to instrumental noise and sample variance in our simulated data analysis. We model the unsubtracted residual foreground contribution using a two-parameter power law and show that marginalization over these foreground parameters is effective in accounting for a bias due to excess foreground power at low ℓ. We conclude that, at least in the suborbital experimental setups we have simulated, foreground errors may be modeled and propagated up to parameter estimation with only a slight degradation of the target sensitivity of these experiments derived neglecting the presence of the foregrounds.

Constraints on the topology of the Universe derived from the 7-yr WMAP data

We impose constraints on the topology of the Universe determined from a search for matched circles in the temperature anisotropy patterns of the 7-year WMAP data. We pay special attention to the sensitivity of the method to residual foreground contamination of the sky maps, and show that for a full sky estimate of the CMB signal (the ILC map) such residuals introduce a non-negligible effect on the statistics of matched circles. In order to reduce this effect, we perform the analysis on maps for which the most contaminated regions have been removed. A search for pairs of matched back-to-back circles in the higher resolution WMAP W-band map allows tighter constraints to be imposed on topology. Our results rule out universes with topologies that predict pairs of such circles with radii larger than \alpha_min \approx 10 degrees. This places a lower bound on the size of the fundamental domain for a flat universe of about 27.9 Gpc. This bound is close to the upper limit on the size of Universe possible to detect by the method of matched circles, i.e. the diameter of the observable Universe is 28.3 Gpc.

Relic gravitational waves in light of the 7-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data and improved prospects for the Planck mission

The new release of data from Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe improves the observational status of relic gravitational waves. The 7-year results enhance the indications of relic gravitational waves in the existing data and change to the better the prospects of confident detection of relic gravitational waves by the currently operating Planck satellite. We apply to WMAP7 data the same methods of analysis that we used earlier [W. Zhao, D. Baskaran, and L.P. Grishchuk, Phys. Rev. D 80, 083005 (2009)] with WMAP5 data. We also revised by the same methods our previous analysis of WMAP3 data. It follows from the examination of consecutive WMAP data releases that the maximum likelihood value of the quadrupole ratio $R$, which characterizes the amount of relic gravitational waves, increases up to $R=0.264$, and the interval separating this value from the point $R=0$ (the hypothesis of no gravitational waves) increases up to a $2\sigma$ level. The primordial spectra of density perturbations and gravitational waves remain blue in the relevant interval of wavelengths, but the spectral indices increase up to $n_s =1.111$ and $n_t=0.111$. Assuming that the maximum likelihood estimates of the perturbation parameters that we found from WMAP7 data are the true values of the parameters, we find that the signal-to-noise ratio $S/N$ for the detection of relic gravitational waves by the Planck experiment increases up to $S/N=4.04$, even under pessimistic assumptions with regard to residual foreground contamination and instrumental noises. We comment on theoretical frameworks that, in the case of success, will be accepted or decisively rejected by the Planck observations.