No Arabic abstract
We show that the new precise measurements of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature and polarization anisotropies made by the Planck satellite significantly improves previous constraints on the cosmic gravitational waves background (CGWB) at frequencies $f>10^{-15}$ Hz. On scales smaller than the horizon at the time of decoupling, primordial gravitational waves contribute to the total radiation content of the Universe. Considering adiabatic perturbations, CGWB affects temperature and polarization CMB power spectra and matter power spectrum in a manner identical to relativistic particles. Considering the latest Planck results we constrain the CGWB energy density to $Omega_{rm gw} h^2 <1.7times 10^{-6} $ at 95% CL. Combining CMB power spectra with lensing, BAO and primordial Deuterium abundance observations, we obtain $Omega_{rm gw} h^2 <1.2times 10^{-6} $ at 95% CL, improving previous Planck bounds by a factor 3 and the recent direct upper limit from the LIGO and VIRGO experiments a factor 2. A combined analysis of future satellite missions as COrE and EUCLID could improve current bound by more than an order of magnitude.
We present results from an analysis of all data taken by the BICEP2/Keck CMB polarization experiments up to and including the 2015 observing season. This includes the first Keck Array observations at 220 GHz and additional observations at 95 & 150 GHz. The $Q/U$ maps reach depths of 5.2, 2.9 and 26 $mu$K$_{cmb}$ arcmin at 95, 150 and 220 GHz respectively over an effective area of $approx 400$ square degrees. The 220 GHz maps achieve a signal-to-noise on polarized dust emission approximately equal to that of Planck at 353 GHz. We take auto- and cross-spectra between these maps and publicly available WMAP and Planck maps at frequencies from 23 to 353 GHz. We evaluate the joint likelihood of the spectra versus a multicomponent model of lensed-$Lambda$CDM+$r$+dust+synchrotron+noise. The foreground model has seven parameters, and we impose priors on some of these using external information from Planck and WMAP derived from larger regions of sky. The model is shown to be an adequate description of the data at the current noise levels. The likelihood analysis yields the constraint $r_{0.05}<0.07$ at 95% confidence, which tightens to $r_{0.05}<0.06$ in conjunction with Planck temperature measurements and other data. The lensing signal is detected at $8.8 sigma$ significance. Running maximum likelihood search on simulations we obtain unbiased results and find that $sigma(r)=0.020$. These are the strongest constraints to date on primordial gravitational waves.
The Planck full mission cosmic microwave background(CMB) temperature and E-mode polarization maps are analysed to obtain constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity(NG). Using three classes of optimal bispectrum estimators - separable template-fitting (KSW), binned, and modal - we obtain consistent values for the local, equilateral, and orthogonal bispectrum amplitudes, quoting as our final result from temperature alone fNL^local=2.5+-5.7, fNL^equil=-16+-70 and fNL^ortho=-34+-33(68%CL). Combining temperature and polarization data we obtain fNL^local=0.8+-5.0, fNL^equil=-4+-43 and fNL^ortho=-26+-21 (68%CL). The results are based on cross-validation of these estimators on simulations, are stable across component separation techniques, pass an extensive suite of tests, and are consistent with Minkowski functionals based measurements. The effect of time-domain de-glitching systematics on the bispectrum is negligible. In spite of these test outcomes we conservatively label the results including polarization data as preliminary, owing to a known mismatch of the noise model in simulations and the data. Beyond fNL estimates, we present model-independent reconstructions of the CMB bispectrum and derive constraints on early universe scenarios that generate NG, including general single-field and axion inflation, initial state modifications, parity-violating tensor bispectra, and directionally dependent vector models. We also present a wide survey of scale-dependent oscillatory bispectra, and we look for isocurvature NG. Our constraint on the local primordial trispectrum amplitude is gNL^local=(-9.0+-7.7)x10^4 (68%CL), and we perform an analysis of additional trispectrum shapes. The global picture is one of consistency with the premises of the LambdaCDM cosmology, namely that the structure we observe today was sourced by adiabatic, passive, Gaussian, and primordial seed perturbations.[abridged]
We compute and investigate four types of imprint of a stochastic background of primordial magnetic fields (PMFs) on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies: the impact of PMFs on the CMB spectra; the effect on CMB polarization induced by Faraday rotation; the impact of PMFs on the ionization history; magnetically-induced non-Gaussianities; and the magnetically-induced breaking of statistical isotropy. Overall, Planck data constrain the amplitude of PMFs to less than a few nanogauss. In particular, individual limits coming from the analysis of the CMB angular power spectra, using the Planck likelihood, are $B_{1,mathrm{Mpc}}< 4.4$ nG (where $B_{1,mathrm{Mpc}}$ is the comoving field amplitude at a scale of 1 Mpc) at 95% confidence level, assuming zero helicity, and $B_{1,mathrm{Mpc}}< 5.6$ nG for a maximally helical field.For nearly scale-invariant PMFs we obtain $B_{1,mathrm{Mpc}}<2.0$ nG and $B_{1,mathrm{Mpc}}<0.9$ nG if the impact of PMFs on the ionization history of the Universe is included. From the analysis of magnetically-induced non-Gaussianity we obtain three different values, corresponding to three applied methods, all below 5 nG. The constraint from the magnetically-induced passive-tensor bispectrum is $B_{1,mathrm{Mpc}}< 2.8$ nG. A search for preferred directions in the magnetically-induced passive bispectrum yields $B_{1,mathrm{Mpc}}< 4.5$ nG, whereas the the compensated-scalar bispectrum gives $B_{1,mathrm{Mpc}}< 3$ nG. The analysis of the Faraday rotation of CMB polarization by PMFs uses the Planck power spectra in $EE$ and $BB$ at 70 GHz and gives $B_{1,mathrm{Mpc}}< 1380$ nG. In our final analysis, we consider the harmonic-space correlations produced by Alfven waves, finding no significant evidence for the presence of these waves. Together, these results comprise a comprehensive set of constraints on possible PMFs with Planck data.
We demonstrate how to obtain optimal constraints on a primordial gravitational wave component in lensed Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data under ideal conditions. We first derive an estimator of the tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r$, by using an error-controlled close approximation to the exact posterior, under the assumption of Gaussian primordial CMB and lensing deflection potential. This combines fast internal iterative lensing reconstruction with optimal recovery of the unlensed CMB. We evaluate its performance on simulated low-noise polarization data targeted at the recombination peak. We carefully demonstrate our $r$-posterior estimate is optimal and shows no significant bias, making it the most powerful estimator of primordial gravitational waves from the CMB. We compare these constraints to those obtained from $B$-mode band-power likelihood analyses on the same simulated data, before and after map-level quadratic estimator delensing, and iterative delensing. Internally, iteratively delensed band powers are only slightly less powerful on average (by less than 10%), promising close-to-optimal constraints from a stage IV CMB experiment.
CMB-S4---the next-generation ground-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment---is set to significantly advance the sensitivity of CMB measurements and enhance our understanding of the origin and evolution of the Universe, from the highest energies at the dawn of time through the growth of structure to the present day. Among the science cases pursued with CMB-S4, the quest for detecting primordial gravitational waves is a central driver of the experimental design. This work details the development of a forecasting framework that includes a power-spectrum-based semi-analytic projection tool, targeted explicitly towards optimizing constraints on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r$, in the presence of Galactic foregrounds and gravitational lensing of the CMB. This framework is unique in its direct use of information from the achieved performance of current Stage 2--3 CMB experiments to robustly forecast the science reach of upcoming CMB-polarization endeavors. The methodology allows for rapid iteration over experimental configurations and offers a flexible way to optimize the design of future experiments given a desired scientific goal. To form a closed-loop process, we couple this semi-analytic tool with map-based validation studies, which allow for the injection of additional complexity and verification of our forecasts with several independent analysis methods. We document multiple rounds of forecasts for CMB-S4 using this process and the resulting establishment of the current reference design of the primordial gravitational-wave component of the Stage-4 experiment, optimized to achieve our science goals of detecting primordial gravitational waves for $r > 0.003$ at greater than $5sigma$, or, in the absence of a detection, of reaching an upper limit of $r < 0.001$ at $95%$ CL.