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We present a search for anisotropic cosmic birefringence in 500 deg$^2$ of southern sky observed at 150 GHz with the SPTpol camera on the South Pole Telescope. We reconstruct a map of cosmic polarization rotation anisotropies using higher-order correlations between the observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) $E$ and $B$ fields. We then measure the angular power spectrum of this map, which is found to be consistent with zero. The non-detection is translated into an upper limit on the amplitude of the scale-invariant cosmic rotation power spectrum, $L(L+1)C_L^{alphaalpha}/2pi < 0.10 times 10^{-4}$ rad$^2$ (0.033 deg$^2$, 95% C.L.). This upper limit can be used to place constraints on the strength of primordial magnetic fields, $B_{1 rm Mpc} < 17 {rm nG} $ (95% C.L.), and on the coupling constant of the Chern-Simons electromagnetic term $g_{agamma} < 4.0 times 10^{-2}/H_I $ (95% C.L.), where $H_I$ is the inflationary Hubble scale. For the first time, we also cross-correlate the CMB temperature fluctuations with the reconstructed rotation angle map, a signal expected to be non-vanishing in certain theoretical scenarios, and find no detectable signal. We perform a suite of systematics and consistency checks and find no evidence for contamination.
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We report a B-mode power spectrum measurement from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization anisotropy observations made using the SPTpol instrument on the South Pole Telescope. This work uses 500 deg$^2$ of SPTpol data, a five-fold increase over the last SPTpol B-mode release. As a result, the bandpower uncertainties have been reduced by more than a factor of two, and the measurement extends to lower multipoles: $52 < ell < 2301$. Data from both 95 and 150 GHz are used, allowing for three cross-spectra: 95 GHz x 95 GHz, 95 GHz x 150 GHz, and 150 GHz x 150 GHz. B-mode power is detected at very high significance; we find $P(BB < 0) = 5.8 times 10^{-71}$, corresponding to a $18.1 sigma$ detection of power. An upper limit is set on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r < 0.44$ at 95% confidence (the expected $1 sigma$ constraint on $r$ given the measurement uncertainties is 0.22). We find the measured B-mode power is consistent with the Planck best-fit $Lambda$CDM model predictions. Scaling the predicted lensing B-mode power in this model by a factor Alens, the data prefer Alens = $1.17 pm 0.13$. These data are currently the most precise measurements of B-mode power at $ell > 320$.
We report the first detection of gravitational lensing due to galaxy clusters using only the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The lensing signal is obtained using a new estimator that extracts the lensing dipole signature from stacked images formed by rotating the cluster-centered Stokes $Q/U$ map cutouts along the direction of the locally measured background CMB polarization gradient. Using data from the SPTpol 500 deg$^{2}$ survey at the locations of roughly 18,000 clusters with richness $lambda ge 10$ from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Year-3 full galaxy cluster catalog, we detect lensing at $4.8sigma$. The mean stacked mass of the selected sample is found to be $(1.43 pm 0.4) times 10^{14} {rm M_{odot}}$ which is in good agreement with optical weak lensing based estimates using DES data and CMB-lensing based estimates using SPTpol temperature data. This measurement is a key first step for cluster cosmology with future low-noise CMB surveys, like CMB-S4, for which CMB polarization will be the primary channel for cluster lensing measurements.
We present a measurement of the $B$-mode polarization power spectrum (the $BB$ spectrum) from 100 $mathrm{deg}^2$ of sky observed with SPTpol, a polarization-sensitive receiver currently installed on the South Pole Telescope. The observations used in this work were taken during 2012 and early 2013 and include data in spectral bands centered at 95 and 150 GHz. We report the $BB$ spectrum in five bins in multipole space, spanning the range $300 le ell le 2300$, and for three spectral combinations: 95 GHz $times$ 95 GHz, 95 GHz $times$ 150 GHz, and 150 GHz $times$ 150 GHz. We subtract small ($< 0.5 sigma$ in units of statistical uncertainty) biases from these spectra and account for the uncertainty in those biases. The resulting power spectra are inconsistent with zero power but consistent with predictions for the $BB$ spectrum arising from the gravitational lensing of $E$-mode polarization. If we assume no other source of $BB$ power besides lensed $B$ modes, we determine a preference for lensed $B$ modes of $4.9 sigma$. After marginalizing over tensor power and foregrounds, namely polarized emission from galactic dust and extragalactic sources, this significance is $4.3 sigma$. Fitting for a single parameter, $A_mathrm{lens}$, that multiplies the predicted lensed $B$-mode spectrum, and marginalizing over tensor power and foregrounds, we find $A_mathrm{lens} = 1.08 pm 0.26$, indicating that our measured spectra are consistent with the signal expected from gravitational lensing. The data presented here provide the best measurement to date of the $B$-mode power spectrum on these angular scales.
The search for cosmic polarization rotation or birefringence in the CMB is well-motivated because it can provide powerful constraints on parity-violating new physics, such as axion-like particles. In this paper we point out that since the CMB polarization is produced at two very different redshifts - it is generated at both reionization and recombination - new parity-violating physics can generically rotate the polarization signals from these different sources by different amounts. We explore two implications of this. First, measurements of CMB birefringence are challenging because the effect is degenerate with a miscalibration of CMB polarization angles; however, by taking the difference of the reionization and recombination birefringence angles (measured from different CMB angular scales), we can obtain a cosmological signal that is immune to instrumental angle miscalibration. Second, we note that the combination with other methods for probing birefringence can give tomographic information, constraining the redshift origin of any physics producing birefringence. We forecast that the difference of the reionization and recombination birefringence angles can be competitively determined to within ~0.05 degrees for future CMB satellites such as LiteBIRD. Although much further work is needed, we argue that foreground mitigation for this measurement should be less challenging than for inflationary B-mode searches on similar scales due to larger signals and lower foregrounds.
We present a measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing potential using 500 deg$^2$ of 150 GHz data from the SPTpol receiver on the South Pole Telescope. The lensing potential is reconstructed with signal-to-noise per mode greater than unity at lensing multipoles $L lesssim 250$, using a quadratic estimator on a combination of CMB temperature and polarization maps. We report measurements of the lensing potential power spectrum in the multipole range of $100< L < 2000$ from sets of temperature-only, polarization-only, and minimum-variance estimators. We measure the lensing amplitude by taking the ratio of the measured spectrum to the expected spectrum from the best-fit $Lambda$CDM model to the $textit{Planck}$ 2015 TT+lowP+lensing dataset. For the minimum-variance estimator, we find $A_{rm{MV}} = 0.944 pm 0.058{rm (Stat.)}pm0.025{rm (Sys.)}$; restricting to only polarization data, we find $A_{rm{POL}} = 0.906 pm 0.090 {rm (Stat.)} pm 0.040 {rm (Sys.)}$. Considering statistical uncertainties alone, this is the most precise polarization-only lensing amplitude constraint to date (10.1 $sigma$), and is more precise than our temperature-only constraint. We perform null tests and consistency checks and find no evidence for significant contamination.
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