We present measurements of the E-mode polarization angular auto-power spectrum (EE) and temperature-E-mode cross-power spectrum (TE) of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using 150 GHz data from three seasons of SPTpol observations. We report the power spectra over the spherical harmonic multipole range ℓ 50 8000 < and detect nine acoustic peaks in the EE spectrum with high signal-to-noise ratio. These measurements are the most sensitive to date of the EE and TE power spectra at ℓ 1050 > and ℓ 1475 > , respectively. The observations cover 500 deg 2 , a fivefold increase in area compared to previous SPTpol analyses, which increases our sensitivity to the photon diffusion damping tail of the CMB power spectra enabling tighter constraints on ΛCDM model extensions. After masking all sources with unpolarized flux 50 > mJy, we place a 95% confidence upper limit on residual polarized point-source power of D ℓ ℓ C 1 2 0.107 K ℓ ℓ 2 p m = + < ( ) at ℓ 3000 = , suggesting that the EE damping
We describe the observations and resultant galaxy cluster catalog from the 2770 deg 2 SPTpolExtended Cluster Survey (SPT-ECS). Clusters are identified via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect and confirmed with a combination of archival and targeted follow-up data, making particular use of data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). With incomplete follow-up we have confirmed as clusters 244 of 266 candidates at a detection significance ξ5 and an additional 204systems at 4<ξ<5. The confirmed sample has a median mass of~´-M Mh 4.4 10 c 500 14 70 1 and a median redshift of z=0.49, and we have identified 44strong gravitational lenses in the sample thus far. Radio data are used to characterize contamination to the SZ signal; the median contamination for confirmed clusters is predicted to be ∼1% of the SZ signal at the ξ>4 threshold, and <4% of clusters have a predicted contamination >10% of their measured SZ flux. We associate SZ-selected clusters, from both SPT-ECS and the SPT-SZ survey, with clusters from the DES redMaPPer sample, and we find an offset distribution between the SZ center and central galaxy in general agreement with previous work, though with a larger fraction of clusters with significant offsets. Adopting a fixed Planck-like cosmology, we measure the optical richness-SZ mass (l-M) relation and find it to be 28% shallower than that from a weak-lensing analysis of the DES data-a difference significant at the 4σ level-with the relations intersecting at λ=60. The SPT-ECS cluster sample will be particularly useful for studying the evolution of massive clusters and, in combination with DES lensing observations and the SPT-SZ cluster sample, will be an important component of future cosmological analyses.
We present a measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing potential using 500 deg 2 of 150 GHz data from the SPTpol receiver on the South Pole Telescope. The lensing potential is reconstructed with signal-to-noise per mode greater than unity at lensing multipoles L 250, using a quadratic estimator on a combination of CMB temperature and polarization maps. We report measurements of the lensing potential power spectrum in the multipole range of 100 < L < 2000 from sets of temperature-only (T), polarization-only (POL), and minimum-variance (MV) estimators. We measure the lensing amplitude by taking the ratio of the measured spectrum to the expected spectrum from the best-fit ΛCDM model to the Planck 2015 TT+lowP+lensing dataset. For the minimumvariance estimator, we find A MV = 0.944 ± 0.058 (Stat.) ± 0.025 (Sys.); restricting to only polarization data, we find A POL = 0.906 ± 0.090 (Stat.) ± 0.040 (Sys.). Considering statistical uncertainties alone, this is the most precise polarization-only lensing amplitude constraint to date (10.1 σ), and is more precise than our temperature-only constraint. We perform null tests and consistency checks and find no evidence for significant contamination. †
We report new measurements of millimeter-wave power spectra in the angular multipole range 2000 ≤ ℓ ≤ 11,000 (angular scales ). By adding 95 and 150 GHz data from the low-noise 500 deg2 SPTpol survey to the SPT-SZ three-frequency 2540 deg2 survey, we substantially reduce the uncertainties in these bands. These power spectra include contributions from the primary cosmic microwave background, cosmic infrared background, radio galaxies, and thermal and kinematic Sunyaev–Zel’dovich (SZ) effects. The data favor a thermal SZ (tSZ) power at 143 GHz of and a kinematic SZ (kSZ) power of . This is the first measurement of kSZ power at ≥3σ. However, different assumptions about the CIB or SZ models can reduce the significance down to 2.4σ in the worst case. We study the implications of the measured kSZ power for the epoch of reionization under the Calabrese et al. model for the kSZ power spectrum and find the duration of reionization to be ( at 95% confidence), when combined with our previously published tSZ bispectrum measurement. The upper limit tightens to if the assumed homogeneous kSZ power is increased by 25% (∼0.5 μK2) and relaxes to if the homogeneous kSZ power is decreased by the same amount.
We present a search for anisotropic cosmic birefringence in 500 deg 2 of southern sky observed at 150 GHz with the SPTpol camera on the South Pole Telescope. We reconstruct a map of cosmic polarization rotation anisotropies using higher-order correlations between the observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) E and B fields. We then measure the angular power spectrum of this map, which is found to be consistent with zero. The nondetection is translated into an upper limit on the amplitude of the scale-invariant cosmic rotation power spectrum, LðL þ 1ÞC αα L =2π < 0.10 × 10 −4 rad 2 (0.033 deg 2 , 95% C.L.). This upper limit can be used to place constraints on the strength of primordial magnetic fields, B 1 Mpc < 17 nG (95% C.L.), and on the coupling constant of the Chern-Simons electromagnetic term g aγ < 4.0 × 10 −2 =H I (95% C.L.), where H I is the inflationary Hubble scale. For the first time, we also cross-correlate the CMB temperature fluctuations with the reconstructed rotation angle map, a signal expected to be nonvanishing in certain theoretical scenarios, and find no detectable signal. We perform a suite of systematics and consistency checks and find no evidence for contamination.
We present cosmological constraints based on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing potential power spectrum measurement from the recent 500 deg 2 SPTpol survey, the most precise CMB lensing measurement from the ground to date. We fit a flat ΛCDM model to the reconstructed lensing power spectrum alone and in addition with other data sets: baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) as well as primary CMB spectra from Planck and SPTpol. The cosmological constraints based on SPTpol and Planck lensing band powers are in good agreement when analysed alone and in combination with Planck full-sky primary CMB data. Within the ΛCDM model, CMB lensing data are primarily sensitive to the amount of large-scale structure as parametrized by σ 8 Ω 0.25 m . With weak priors on the baryon density and other parameters, the SPTpol CMB lensing data alone provide a 4% constraint on σ 8 Ω 0.25 m = 0.593 ± 0.025. Jointly fitting with BAO data, we find σ 8 = 0.779 ± 0.023, Ω m = 0.368 +0.032 −0.037 , and H 0 = 72.0 +2.1 −2.5 km s −1 Mpc −1 , up to 2 σ away from the central values preferred by Planck lensing + BAO. However, we recover good agreement between SPTpol and Planck when restricting the analysis to similar scales. We also consider single-parameter extensions to the flat ΛCDM model. In combination with Planck primary CMB measurements and BAO, the SPTpol lensing spectrum constrains the spatial curvature to be Ω K = −0.0007 ± 0.0025 and the sum of the neutrino masses to be m ν < 0.23 eV at 95% C.L., both in good agreement with the full-sky Planck lensing results. With the differences in the S/N of the lensing modes and the angular scales covered in the lensing spectra, this analysis represents an important independent check on the full-sky Planck lensing measurement.
We present a catalog of galaxy cluster candidates detected in 100 square degrees surveyed with the SPTpol receiver on the South Pole Telescope. The catalog contains 89 candidates detected with a signal-to-noise ratio greater than 4.6. The candidates are selected using the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect at 95 and 150 GHz. Using both space-and ground-based optical and infrared telescopes, we have confirmed 81 candidates as galaxy clusters. We use these follow-up images and archival images to estimate photometric redshifts for 66 galaxy clusters and spectroscopic observations to obtain redshifts for 13 systems. An additional two galaxy clusters are confirmed using the overdensity of near-infrared galaxies only and are presented without redshifts. We find that 15 candidates (18% of the total sample) are at redshift z1.0, with a maximum confirmed redshift of = z 1.38 0.10 max . We expect this catalog to contain every galaxy cluster with
We report a B-mode power spectrum measurement from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization anisotropy observations made using the SPTpol instrument on the South Pole Telescope. This work uses 500 deg 2 of SPTpol data, a five-fold increase over the last SPTpol B-mode release. As a result, the bandpower uncertainties have been reduced by more than a factor of two, and the measurement extends to lower multipoles: 52 < l < 2301. Data from both 95 and 150 GHz are used, allowing for three crossspectra: 95 GHz × 95 GHz, 95 GHz × 150 GHz, and 150 GHz × 150 GHz. B-mode power is detected at very high significance; we find PðBB < 0Þ ¼ 5.8 × 10 −71 , corresponding to a 18.1σ detection of power. With a prior on the galactic dust from Planck, WMAP and BICEP2/Keck observations, the SPTpol B-mode data can be used to set an upper limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, r < 0.44 at 95% confidence (the expected 1σ constraint on r given the measurement uncertainties is 0.22). We find the measured B-mode power is consistent with the Planck best-fit ΛCDM model predictions. Scaling the predicted lensing B-mode power in this model by a factor A lens , the data prefer A lens ¼ 1.17 AE 0.13. These data are currently the most precise measurements of B-mode power at l > 320.
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