No Arabic abstract
We report new measurements of millimeter-wave power spectra in the angular multipole range $2000 le ell le 11,000$ (angular scales $5^prime gtrsim theta gtrsim 1^prime$). By adding 95 and 150,GHz data from the low-noise 500 deg$^2$ SPTpol survey to the SPT-SZ three-frequency 2540 deg$^2$ survey, we substantially reduce the uncertainties in these bands. These power spectra include contributions from the primary cosmic microwave background, cosmic infrared background, radio galaxies, and thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effects. The data favor a thermal SZ (tSZ) power at 143,GHz of $D^{rm tSZ}_{3000} = 3.42 pm 0.54~ mu {rm K}^2$ and a kinematic SZ (kSZ) power of $D^{rm kSZ}_{3000} = 3.0 pm 1.0~ mu {rm K}^2$. This is the first measurement of kSZ power at $ge 3,sigma$. We study the implications of the measured kSZ power for the epoch of reionization, finding the duration of reionization to be $Delta z_{re} = 1.0^{+1.6}_{-0.7}$ ($Delta z_{re}< 4.1$ at 95% confidence), when combined with our previously published tSZ bispectrum measurement.
We present measurements of secondary cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies and cosmic infrared background (CIB) fluctuations using data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) covering the complete 2540 sq.deg. SPT-SZ survey area. Data in the three SPT-SZ frequency bands centered at 95, 150, and 220 GHz, are used to produce six angular power spectra (three single-frequency auto-spectra and three cross-spectra) covering the multipole range 2000 < ell < 11000 (angular scales 5 > theta > 1). These are the most precise measurements of the angular power spectra at ell > 2500 at these frequencies. The main contributors to the power spectra at these angular scales and frequencies are the primary CMB, CIB, thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich effects (tSZ and kSZ), and radio galaxies. We include a constraint on the tSZ power from a measurement of the tSZ bispectrum from 800 sq.deg. of the SPT-SZ survey. We measure the tSZ power at 143 GHz to be DtSZ = 4.08 +0.58 -0.67 mu K^2 and the kSZ power to be DkSZ = 2.9 +- 1.3 mu K^2. The data prefer positive kSZ power at 98.1% CL. We measure a correlation coefficient of xi = 0.113 +0.057 -0.054 between sources of tSZ and CIB power, with xi < 0 disfavored at a confidence level of 99.0%. The constraint on kSZ power can be interpreted as an upper limit on the duration of reionization. When the post-reionization homogeneous kSZ signal is accounted for, we find an upper limit on the duration Delta z < 5.4 at 95% CL.
We report measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) power spectrum from the complete 2008 South Pole Telescope (SPT) data set. We analyze twice as much data as the first SPT power spectrum analysis, using an improved cosmological parameter estimator which fits multi-frequency models to the SPT 150 and $220,$GHz bandpowers. We find an excellent fit to the measured bandpowers with a model that includes lensed primary CMB anisotropy, secondary thermal (tSZ) and kinetic (kSZ) Sunyaev-Zeldovich anisotropies, unclustered synchrotron point sources, and clustered dusty point sources. In addition to measuring the power spectrum of dusty galaxies at high signal-to-noise, the data primarily constrain a linear combination of the kSZ and tSZ anisotropy contributions at $150,$GHz and $ell=3000$: $D^{tSZ}_{3000} + 0.5,D^{kSZ}_{3000} = 4.5pm 1.0 ,mu{rm K}^2$. The 95% confidence upper limits on secondary anisotropy power are $D^{tSZ}_{3000} < 5.3,mu{rm K}^2$ and $D^{kSZ}_{3000} < 6.5,mu{rm K}^2$. We also consider the potential correlation of dusty and tSZ sources, and find it incapable of relaxing the tSZ upper limit. These results increase the significance of the lower than expected tSZ amplitude previously determined from SPT power spectrum measurements. We find that models including non-thermal pressure support in groups and clusters predict tSZ power in better agreement with the SPT data. Combining the tSZ power measurement with primary CMB data halves the statistical uncertainty on $sigma_8$. However, the preferred value of $sigma_8$ varies significantly between tSZ models. Improved constraints on cosmological parameters from tSZ power spectrum measurements require continued progress in the modeling of the tSZ power.
We explore extensions to the $Lambda$CDM cosmology using measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from the recent SPT-SZ survey, along with data from WMAP7 and measurements of $H_0$ and BAO. We check for consistency within $Lambda$CDM between these datasets, and find some tension. The CMB alone gives weak support to physics beyond $Lambda$CDM, due to a slight trend relative to $Lambda$CDM of decreasing power towards smaller angular scales. While it may be due to statistical fluctuation, this trend could also be explained by several extensions. We consider running index (nrun), as well as two extensions that modify the damping tail power (the primordial helium abundance $Y_p$ and the effective number of neutrino species $N_{rm eff}$) and one that modifies the large-scale power due to the ISW effect (the sum of neutrino masses $sum m_ u$). These extensions have similar observational consequences and are partially degenerate when considered simultaneously. Of the 6 one-parameter extensions considered, we find CMB to have the largest preference for nrun with -0.046<nrun<-0.003 at 95% confidence, which strengthens to a 2.7$sigma$ indication of nrun<0 from CMB+BAO+$H_0$. Detectable non-zero nrun is difficult to explain in the context of single-field, slow-roll inflation models. We find $N_{rm eff}=3.62pm0.48$ for the CMB, which tightens to $N_{rm eff}=3.71pm0.35$ from CMB+BAO+$H_0$. Larger values of $N_{rm eff}$ relieve the mild tension between CMB, BAO and $H_0$. When the SZ selected galaxy cluster abundances ($rm{SPT_{CL}}$) data are also included, we obtain $N_{rm eff}=3.29pm0.31$. Allowing for $sum m_ u$ gives a 3$sigma$ detection of $sum m_ u$>0 from CMB+BAO+$H_0$+$rm{SPT_{CL}}$. The median value is $(0.32pm0.11)$ eV, a factor of six above the lower bound set by neutrino oscillation observations. ... [abridged]
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) contains perturbations that are close to Gaussian and isotropic. This means that its information content, in the sense of the ability to constrain cosmological models, is closely related to the number of modes probed in CMB power spectra. Rather than making forecasts for specific experimental setups, here we take a more pedagogical approach and ask how much information we can extract from the CMB if we are only limited by sample variance. We show that, compared with temperature measurements, the addition of E-mode polarization doubles the number of modes available out to a fixed maximum multipole, provided that all of the TT, TE, and EE power spectra are measured. However, the situation in terms of constraints on particular parameters is more complicated, as we explain and illustrate graphically. We also discuss the enhancements in information that can come from adding B-mode polarization and gravitational lensing. We show how well one could ever determine the basic cosmological parameters from CMB data compared with what has been achieved with Planck, which has already probed a substantial fraction of the TT information. Lastly, we look at constraints on neutrino mass as a specific example of how lensing information improves future prospects beyond the current 6-parameter model.
We present a measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) gravitational lensing potential using data from the first two seasons of observations with SPTpol, the polarization-sensitive receiver currently installed on the South Pole Telescope (SPT). The observations used in this work cover 100 deg$^2$ of sky with arcminute resolution at 150 GHz. Using a quadratic estimator, we make maps of the CMB lensing potential from combinations of CMB temperature and polarization maps. We combine these lensing potential maps to form a minimum-variance (MV) map. The lensing potential is measured with a signal-to-noise ratio of greater than one for angular multipoles between $100< L <250$. This is the highest signal-to-noise mass map made from the CMB to date and will be powerful in cross-correlation with other tracers of large-scale structure. We calculate the power spectrum of the lensing potential for each estimator, and we report the value of the MV power spectrum between $100< L <2000$ as our primary result. We constrain the ratio of the spectrum to a fiducial $Lambda$CDM model to be $A_{rm MV}=0.92 pm 0.14 {rm, (Stat.)} pm 0.08 {rm, (Sys.)}$. Restricting ourselves to polarized data only, we find $A_{rm POL}=0.92 pm 0.24 {rm, (Stat.)} pm 0.11 {rm, (Sys.)}$. This measurement rejects the hypothesis of no lensing at $5.9 sigma$ using polarization data alone, and at $14 sigma$ using both temperature and polarization data.