The next generation "Stage-4" ground-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment, CMB-S4, consisting of dedicated telescopes equipped with highly sensitive superconducting cameras operating at the South Pole, the high Chilean Atacama plateau, and possibly northern hemisphere sites, will provide a dramatic leap forward in our understanding of the fundamental nature of space and time and the evolution of the Universe. CMB-S4 will be designed to cross critical thresholds in testing inflation, determining the number and masses of the neutrinos, constraining possible new light relic particles, providing precise constraints on the nature of dark energy, and testing general relativity on large scales.CMB-S4 is intended to be the definitive ground-based CMB project. It will deliver a highly constraining data set with which any model for the origin of the primordial fluctuations-be it inflation or an alternative theory-and their evolution to the structure seen in the Universe today must be consistent. While we have learned a great deal from CMB measurements, including discoveries that have pointed the way to new physics, we have only begun to tap the information encoded in CMB polarization, CMB lensing and other secondary effects. The discovery space from these and other yet to be imagined effects will be maximized by designing CMB-S4 to produce high-fidelity maps, which will also ensure enormous legacy value for CMB-S4. CMB-S4 is the logical successor to the Stage-3 CMB projects which will operate over the next few years. For maximum impact, CMB-S4 should be implemented on a schedule that allows a transition from Stage 3 to Stage 4 that is as seamless and as timely as possible, preserving the expertise in the community and ensuring a continued stream of CMB science results. This timing is also necessary to ensure the optimum synergistic enhancement of the science return from contemporaneous optical surveys (e.g., LSST, DESI, Euclid and WFIRST). Information learned from the ongoing Stage-3 experiments can be easily incorporated into CMB-S4 with little or no impact on its design. In particular, additional information on the properties of Galactic foregrounds would inform the detailed distribution of detectors among frequency bands in CMB-S4. The sensitivity and fidelity of the multiple band foreground measurements needed to realize the goals of CMB-S4 will be provided by CMB-S4 itself, at frequencies just below and above those of the main CMB channels. This timeline is possible because CMB-S4 will use proven existing technology that has been developed and demonstrated by the CMB experimental groups over the last decade. There are, to be sure, considerable technical challenges presented by the required scaling-up of the instrumentation and by the scope and complexity of the data analysis and interpretation. CMB-S4 will require: scaled-up superconducting detector arrays with well-understood and robust material properties and processing techniques; high-throughput mmwave telescopes and optics with unprecedented precisi...

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Ultralight axions (ULAs) with masses in the range 10 −33 eV ≤ m a ≤ 10 −20 eV are motivated by string theory and might contribute to either the dark-matter or dark-energy densities of the Universe. ULAs could suppress the growth of structure on small scales, lead to an altered integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect on cosmic microwave-background (CMB) anisotropies, and change the angular scale of the CMB acoustic peaks. In this work, cosmological observables over the full ULA mass range are computed and then used to search for evidence of ULAs using CMB data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), Planck satellite, Atacama Cosmology Telescope, and South Pole Telescope, as well as galaxy clustering data from the WiggleZ galaxy-redshift survey. In the mass range 10 −32 eV ≤ m a ≤ 10 −25.5 eV, the axion relicdensity Ω a (relative to the total dark-matter relic density Ω d ) must obey the constraints Ω a =Ω d ≤ 0.05 and Ω a h 2 ≤ 0.006 at 95% confidence. For m a ≳ 10 −24 eV, ULAs are indistinguishable from standard cold dark matter on the length scales probed, and are thus allowed by these data. For m a ≲ 10 −32 eV, ULAs are allowed to compose a significant fraction of the dark energy.

This document on the CMB-S4 Science Case, Reference Design, and Project Plan is the product of a global community of scientists who are united in support of advancing CMB-S4 to cross key thresholds in our understanding of the fundamental nature of space and time and the evolution of the Universe. CMB-S4 is planned to be a joint National Science Foundation (NSF) and Department of Energy (DOE) project, with the construction phase to be funded as an NSF Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) project and a DOE High Energy Physics (HEP) Major Item of Equipment (MIE) project. At the time of this writing, an interim project office has been constituted and tasked with advancing the CMB-S4 project in the NSF MREFC Preliminary Design Phase and toward DOE Critical Decision CD-1. DOE CD-0 is expected imminently.CMB-S4 has been in development for six years. Through the Snowmass Cosmic Frontier planning process, experimental groups in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and broader cosmology communities came together to produce two influential CMB planning papers, endorsed by over 90 scientists, that outlined the science case as well as the CMB-S4 instrumental concept [1, 2]. It immediately became clear that an enormous increase in the scale of ground-based CMB experiments would be needed to achieve the exciting thresholdcrossing scientific goals, necessitating a phase change in the ground-based CMB experimental program. To realize CMB-S4, a partnership of the university-based CMB groups, the broader cosmology community, and the national laboratories would be needed.The community proposed CMB-S4 to the 2014 Particle Physics Project Prioritization Process (P5) as a single, community-wide experiment, jointly supported by DOE and NSF. Following P5's recommendation of CMB-S4 under all budget scenarios, the CMB community started in early 2015 to hold biannual workshops -open to CMB scientists from around the world -to develop and refine the concept. Nine workshops have been held to date, typically with 150 to 200 participants. The workshops have focused on developing the unique and vital role of the future ground-based CMB program. This growing CMB-S4 community produced a detailed and influential CMB-S4 Science Book [3] and a CMB-S4 Technology Book [4]. Over 200 scientists contributed to these documents. These and numerous other reports, workshop and working group wiki pages, email lists, and much more may be found at the website http://CMB-S4.org.Soon after the CMB-S4 Science Book was completed in August 2016, DOE and NSF requested the Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC) to convene a Concept Definition Taskforce (CDT) to conduct a CMB-S4 concept study. The resulting report was unanimously accepted in late 2017. 1 One recommendation of the CDT report was that the community should organize itself into a formal collaboration. An Interim Collaboration Coordination Committee was elected by the community to coordinate this process. The resulting draft bylaws were refined at the Spring 2018 CMB-S4...

Cosmological observations are used to test for imprints of an ultra-light axion-like field (ULA), with a range of potentials V (φ) ∝ [1−cos(φ/f)] n set by the axion-field value φ and decay constant f. Scalar field dynamics dictate that the field is initially frozen and then begins to oscillate around its minimum when the Hubble parameter drops below some critical value. For n = 1, once dynamical, the axion energy density dilutes as matter; for n = 2 it dilutes as radiation and for n = 3 it dilutes faster than radiation. Both the homogeneous evolution of the ULA and the dynamics of its linear perturbations are included, using an effective fluid approximation generalized from the usual n = 1 case. ULA models are parameterized by the redshift zc when the field becomes dynamical, the fractional energy density fz c ≡ Ωa(zc)/Ωtot(zc) in the axion field at zc, and the effective sound speed c 2 s. Using Planck, BAO and JLA data, constraints on fz c are obtained. ULAs are degenerate with dark energy for all three potentials if 1+zc 10. When 3×10 4 1+zc 10, fz c is constrained to be 0.004 for n = 1 and fz c 0.02 for the other two potentials. The constraints then relax with increasing zc. These results have implications for ULAs as a resolution to cosmological tensions, such as discrepant measurements of the Hubble constant, or the EDGES measurement of the global 21 cm signal.