A new limit on CMB circular polarization from SPIDER

Nagy, J. M., Ade, Peter ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5127-0401, Amiri, M., Benton, S. J., Bergman, A. S., Bihary, R., Bock, J. J., Bond, J. R., Bryan, S. A., Chiang, H. C., Contaldi, C. R., Doré, O., Duivenvoorden, A. J., Eriksen, H. K., Farhang, M., Filippini, J. P., Fissel, L. M., Fraisse, A. A., Freese, K., Galloway, M., Gambrel, A. E., Gandilo, N. N., Ganga, K., Gudmundsson, J. E., Halpern, M., Hartley, J., Hasselfield, M., Hilton, G., Holmes, W., Hristov, V. V., Huang, Z., Irwin, K. D., Jones, W. C., Kuo, C. L., Kermish, Z. D., Li, S., Mason, P. V., Megerian, K., Moncelsi, L., Morford, T. A., Netterfield, C. B., Nolta, M., Padilla, I. L., Racine, B., Rahlin, A. S., Reintsema, C., Ruhl, J. E., Runyan, M. C., Ruud, T. M., Shariff, J. A., Soler, J. D., Song, X., Trangsrud, A., Tucker, Carole ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1851-3918, Tucker, R. S., Turner, A. D., List, J. F. Van Der, Weber, A. C., Wehus, I. K., Wiebe, D. V. and Young, E. Y. 2017. A new limit on CMB circular polarization from SPIDER. Astrophysical Journal 844 (2) , 151. 10.3847/1538-4357/aa7cfd

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Abstract

We present a new upper limit on cosmic microwave background (CMB) circular polarization from the 2015 flight of Spider, a balloon-borne telescope designed to search for B-mode linear polarization from cosmic inflation. Although the level of circular polarization in the CMB is predicted to be very small, experimental limits provide a valuable test of the underlying models. By exploiting the nonzero circular-to-linear polarization coupling of the half-wave plate polarization modulators, data from Spider's 2015 Antarctic flight provide a constraint on Stokes V at 95 and 150 GHz in the range $33\lt {\ell }\lt 307$. No other limits exist over this full range of angular scales, and Spider improves on the previous limit by several orders of magnitude, providing 95% C.L. constraints on ${\ell }({\ell }+1){C}_{{\ell }}^{{VV}}/(2\pi )$ ranging from 141 to 255 μK2 at 150 GHz for a thermal CMB spectrum. As linear CMB polarization experiments become increasingly sensitive, the techniques described in this paper can be applied to obtain even stronger constraints on circular polarization.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Physics and Astronomy
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy Q Science > QC Physics
Publisher:	American Astronomical Society
ISSN:	1538-4357
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	1 September 2017
Date of Acceptance:	28 June 2017
Last Modified:	17 Nov 2024 21:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/104199

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