BICEP/Keck XVIII: Measurement of BICEP3 polarization angles and consequences for constraining cosmic birefringence and inflation

Ade, P. A. R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5127-0401, Ahmed, Z., Amiri, M., Barkats, D., Basu Thakur, R., Bischoff, C. A., Beck, D., Bock, J. J., Boenish, H., Buza, V., Cheshire, J. R., Connors, J., Cornelison, J., Crumrine, M., Cukierman, A. J., Denison, E., Duband, L., Eiben, M., Elwood, B. D., Fatigoni, S., Filippini, J. P., Fortes, A., Gao, M., Giannakopoulos, C., Goeckner-Wald, N., Goldfinger, D. C., Grayson, J. A., Greathouse, A., Grimes, P. K., Hall, G., Halal, G., Halpern, M., Hand, E., Harrison, S. A., Henderson, S., Hubmayr, J., Hui, H., Irwin, K. D., Kang, J. H., Karkare, K. S., Kefeli, S., Kovac, J. M., Kuo, C., Lau, K., Lautzenhiser, M., Lennox, A., Liu, T., Megerian, K. G., Minutolo, L., Moncelsi, L., Nakato, Y., Nguyen, H. T., O’brient, R., Patel, A., Petroff, M. A., Polish, A. R., Prouve, T., Pryke, C., Reintsema, C. D., Romand, T., Salatino, M., Schillaci, A., Schmitt, B., Singari, B., Sjoberg, K., Soliman, A., St Germaine, T., Steiger, A., Steinbach, B., Sudiwala, R., Thompson, K. L., Tsai, C., Tucker, C., Turner, A. D., Vergès, C., Vieregg, A. G., Wandui, A., Weber, A. C., Willmert, J., Wu, W. L. K., Yang, H., Yu, C., Zeng, L., Zhang, C. and Zhang, S. 2025. BICEP/Keck XVIII: Measurement of BICEP3 polarization angles and consequences for constraining cosmic birefringence and inflation. Physical Review D (particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology) 111 , 63505. 10.1103/physrevd.111.063505

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Abstract

We use a custom-made calibrator to measure individual detectors’ polarization angles of BICEP3, a small aperture telescope observing the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at 95 GHz from the South Pole. We describe our calibration strategy and the statistical and systematic uncertainties associated with the measurement. We reach an unprecedented precision for such measurement on a CMB experiment, with a repeatability for each detector pair of 0.02°. We show that the relative angles measured using this method are in excellent agreement with those extracted from CMB data. Because the absolute measurement is currently limited by a systematic uncertainty, we do not derive cosmic birefringence constraints from BICEP3 data in this work. Rather, we forecast the sensitivity of BICEP3 sky maps for such analysis. We investigate the relative contributions of instrument noise, lensing, and dust, as well as astrophysical and instrumental systematics.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Physics and Astronomy
Additional Information:	See link to publisher's page for full abstract.
Publisher:	American Physical Society
ISSN:	2470-0010
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	7 April 2025
Date of Acceptance:	28 January 2025
Last Modified:	07 Apr 2025 14:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/176912

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