BICEP/Keck. XX. component-separated maps of the polarized cosmic microwave background and thermal dust emission using Planck and BICEP/Keck observations through the 2018 observing season

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., Cantrall, B., Cheshire, J. R. IV, Connors, J., Cornelison, J., Crumrine, M., Cukierman, A. J., Sudiwala, R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3240-5304 and Tucker, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1851-3918 2026. BICEP/Keck. XX. component-separated maps of the polarized cosmic microwave background and thermal dust emission using Planck and BICEP/Keck observations through the 2018 observing season. The Astrophysical Journal 999 (1) , 89. 10.3847/1538-4357/ae3e53

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Abstract

We present component-separated polarization maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and Galactic thermal dust emission, derived using data from the BICEP/Keck experiments through the 2018 observing season and Planck. By employing a maximum-likelihood method that utilizes observing matrices, we produce unbiased maps of the CMB and dust signals. We outline the computational challenges and demonstrate an efficient implementation of the component map estimator. We show methods to compute and characterize power spectra of these maps, opening up an alternative way to infer the tensor-to-scalar ratio from our data. We compare the results of this map-based separation method with the baseline BICEP/Keck analysis. Our analysis demonstrates consistency between the two methods, finding an 84% correlation between the pipelines.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Physics and Astronomy
Additional Information:	Full author list available at DOI link
Publisher:	American Astronomical Society
ISSN:	0004-637X
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	3 March 2026
Date of Acceptance:	25 January 2026
Last Modified:	03 Mar 2026 12:16
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/185413

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