We present cosmological parameters derived from the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation observed at 148 GHz and 218 GHz over 296 deg 2 with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) during its 2008 season. ACT measures fluctuations at scales 500 < < 10,000. We fit a model for the lensed CMB, Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ), and foreground contribution to the 148 GHz and 218 GHz power spectra, including thermal and kinetic SZ, Poisson power from radio and infrared point sources, and clustered power from infrared point sources. At = 3000, about half the power at 148 GHz comes from primary CMB after masking bright radio sources. The power from thermal and kinetic SZ is estimated to be B 3000 = 6.8 ± 2.9 μK 2 , where B ≡ ( + 1)C /2π . The IR Poisson power at 148 GHz is B 3000 = 7.8 ± 0.7 μK 2 (C = 5.5 ± 0.5 nK 2 ), and a clustered IR component is required with B 3000 = 4.6 ± 0.9 μK 2 , assuming an analytic model for its power spectrum shape. At 218 GHz only about 15% of the power, approximately 27 μK 2 , is CMB anisotropy at = 3000. The remaining 85% is attributed to IR sources (approximately 50% Poisson and 35% clustered), with spectral index α = 3.69 ± 0.14 for flux scaling as S(ν) ∝ ν α . We estimate primary cosmological parameters from the less contaminated 148 GHz spectrum, marginalizing over SZ and source power. The ΛCDM cosmological model is a good fit to the data (χ 2 /dof = 29/46), and ΛCDM parameters estimated from ACT+Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) are consistent with the seven-year WMAP limits, with scale invariant n s = 1 excluded at 99.7% confidence level (CL) (3σ ). A model with no CMB lensing is disfavored at 2.8σ . By measuring the third to seventh acoustic peaks, and probing the Silk damping regime, the ACT data improve limits on cosmological parameters that affect the small-scale CMB power. The ACT data combined with WMAP give a 6σ detection of primordial helium, with Y P = 0.313 ± 0.044, and a 4σ detection of relativistic species, assumed to be neutrinos, with N eff = 5.3 ± 1.3 (4.6 ± 0.8 with BAO+H 0 data). From the CMB alone the running of the spectral index is constrained to be dn s /d ln k = −0.034 ± 0.018, the limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio is r < 0.25 (95% CL), and the possible contribution of Nambu cosmic strings to the power spectrum is constrained to string tension Gμ < 1.6 × 10 −7 (95% CL).

No abstract

We present a catalog of 68 galaxy clusters, of which 19 are new discoveries, detected via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZ) at 148 GHz in the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) survey on the celestial equator. With this addition, the ACT collaboration has reported a total of 91 optically confirmed, SZ detected clusters. The 504 square degree survey region includes 270 square degrees of overlap with SDSS Stripe 82, permitting the confirmation of SZ cluster candidates in deep archival optical data. The subsample of 48 clusters within Stripe 82 is estimated to be 90% complete for M 500c > 4.5 × 10 14 M ⊙ and redshifts 0.15 < z < 0.8. While a full suite of matched filters is used to detect the clusters, the sample is studied further through a "Profile Based Amplitude Analysis" using a statistic derived from a single filter at a fixed θ 500 = 5. ′ 9 angular scale. This new approach incorporates the cluster redshift along with prior information on the cluster pressure profile to fix the relationship between the cluster characteristic size (R 500 ) and the integrated Compton parameter (Y 500 ). We adopt a one-parameter family of "Universal Pressure Profiles" (UPP) with associated scaling laws, derived from X-ray measurements of nearby clusters, as a baseline model. Three additional models of cluster physics are used to investigate a range of scaling relations beyond the UPP prescription. Assuming a concordance cosmology, the UPP scalings are found to be nearly identical to an adiabatic model, while a model incorporating non-thermal pressure better matches dynamical mass measurements and masses from the South Pole Telescope. A high signal to noise ratio subsample of 15 ACT clusters with complete optical follow-up is used to obtain cosmological constraints. We demonstrate, using fixed scaling relations, how the constraints depend on the assumed gas model if only SZ measurements are used, and show that constraints from SZ data are limited by uncertainty in the scaling relation parameters rather than sample size or measurement uncertainty. We next add in seven clusters from the ACT Southern survey, including their dynamical mass measurements, which are based on galaxy velocity dispersions and thus are independent of the gas physics. In combination with WMAP7 these data simultaneously constrain the scaling relation and cosmological parameters, yielding 68% confidence ranges described by σ 8 = 0.829 ± 0.024 and Ω m = 0.292 ± 0.025. We consider these results in the context of constraints from CMB and other cluster studies. The constraints arise mainly due to the inclusion of the dynamical mass information and do not require strong priors on the SZ scaling relation parameters. The results include marginalization over a 15% bias in dynamical masses relative to the true halo mass. In an extension to ΛCDM that incorporates non-zero neutrino mass density, we combine our data with WMAP7, Baryon Acoustic Oscillation data, and Hubble constant measurements to constrain the sum of the neutrino mass species to be ν m ν < 0.29 eV (95% con...

We present constraints on cosmological and astrophysical parameters from high-resolution microwave background maps at 148 GHz and 218 GHz made by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in three seasons of observations from 2008 to 2010. A model of primary cosmological and secondary foreground parameters is fit to the map power spectra and lensing deflection power spectrum, including contributions from both the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (tSZ) effect and the kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (kSZ) effect, Poisson and correlated anisotropy from unresolved infrared sources, radio sources, and the correlation between the tSZ effect and infrared sources. The power ℓ 2 C ℓ /2π of the thermal SZ power spectrum at 148 GHz is measured to be 3.4 ± 1.4 µK 2 at ℓ = 3000, while the corresponding amplitude of the kinematic SZ power spectrum has a 95% confidence level upper limit of 8.6 µK 2. Combining ACT power spectra with the WMAP 7-year temperature and polarization power spectra, we find excellent consistency with the LCDM model. We constrain the number of effective relativistic degrees of freedom in the early universe to be N eff = 2.79 ± 0.56, in agreement with the canonical value of N eff = 3.046 for three massless neutrinos. We constrain the sum of the neutrino masses to be Σm ν < 0.39 eV at 95% confidence when combining ACT and WMAP 7-year data with BAO and Hubble constant measurements. We constrain the amount of primordial helium to be Y p = 0.225 ± 0.034, and measure no variation in the fine structure constant α since recombination, with α/α 0 = 1.004 ± 0.005. We also find no evidence for any running of the scalar spectral index, dn s /d ln k = −0.004 ± 0.012.

The statistical expectation values of the temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are assumed to be preserved under the rotations of the sky. This assumption of the statistical isotropy (SI) of the CMB anisotropy should be observationally verified since detection of a violation of SI could have profound implications for cosmology. We propose a set of measures, ( , 2, 3, …), for detecting a violation of SI k ᐉ p 1 ᐉ in an observed CMB anisotropy sky map indicated by nonzero . We define an estimator for the spectrum k k ᐉ ᐉ and analytically compute its cosmic bias and cosmic variance. The results match those obtained by measuring using simulated sky maps. Nonzero (bias-corrected) larger than the SI cosmic variance will imply a violation k k ᐉ ᐉ of SI. The SI measure proposed in this Letter is an appropriate statistic to investigate a preliminary indication of SI violation in the recently released Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data. Subject headings: cosmic microwave background -cosmology: observations On-line material: color figureCosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy is a very powerful observational probe of cosmology. In standard cosmology, CMB anisotropy is expected to be statistically isotropic; i.e., the statistical expectation values of the temperature fluctuations are preserved under the rotations of the sky. DT(q)In particular, the angular correlation function ˆĈ(q, q ) { is rotationally invariant for Gaussian fields. In ˆÂDT(q)DT(q )S spherical harmonic space, where , thiŝDT(q)p a Y (q) lm lm lm translates to a diagonal , where , the *

No abstract

We report on 23 clusters detected blindly as Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) decrements in a 148 GHz, 455 deg 2 map of the southern sky made with data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope 2008 observing season. All SZ detections announced in this work have confirmed optical counterparts. Ten of the clusters are new discoveries. One newly discovered cluster, ACT-CL J0102−4915, with a redshift of 0.75 (photometric), has an SZ decrement comparable to the most massive systems at lower redshifts. Simulations of the cluster recovery method reproduce the sample purity measured by optical follow-up. In particular, for clusters detected with a signal-to-noise ratio greater than six, simulations are consistent with optical follow-up that demonstrated this subsample is 100% pure. The simulations further imply that the total sample is 80% complete for clusters with mass in excess of 6 × 10 14 solar masses referenced to the cluster volume characterized by 500 times the critical density. The Compton y-X-ray luminosity mass comparison for the 11 best-detected clusters visually agrees with both self-similar and non-adiabatic, simulation-derived scaling laws.

Using high-resolution microwave sky maps made by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, we for the first time present strong evidence for motions of galaxy clusters and groups via microwave background temperature distortions due to the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. Galaxy clusters are identified by their constituent luminous galaxies observed by the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. We measure the mean pairwise momentum of clusters, with a probability of the signal being due to random errors of 0.002, and the signal is consistent with the growth of cosmic structure in the standard model of cosmology.