The Temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background

Fixsen, D. J.

doi:10.1088/0004-637x/707/2/916

Cited by 1,030 publications

(934 citation statements)

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“…The intensity spectrum of the CMB was precisely measured by COBE/FIRAS over two decades ago (Mather et al 1990;Fixsen et al 1996) and is consistent with a blackbody at temperature T 0 = 2.72548 ± 0.00057 K from ν 3 GHz to 3,000 GHz (Fixsen 2009). This agrees with a variety of other CMB observations including COBRA, TRIS, and ARCADE (Gush et al 1990;Gervasi et al 2008;Kogut et al 2006;Seiffert et al 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 55%

Prospects for measuring cosmic microwave background spectral distortions in the presence of foregrounds

Abitbol

Chluba

Hill

et al. 2017

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

146

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Measurements of cosmic microwave background spectral distortions have profound implications for our understanding of physical processes taking place over a vast window in cosmological history. Foreground contamination is unavoidable in such measurements and detailed signal-foreground separation will be necessary to extract cosmological science. In this paper, we present MCMC-based spectral distortion detection forecasts in the presence of Galactic and extragalactic foregrounds for a range of possible experimental configurations, focusing on the Primordial Inflation Explorer (PIXIE) as a fiducial concept. We consider modifications to the baseline PIXIE mission (operating 12 months in distortion mode), searching for optimal configurations using a Fisher approach. Using only spectral information, we forecast an extended PIXIE mission to detect the expected average non-relativistic and relativistic thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich distortions at high significance (194σ and 11σ, respectively), even in the presence of foregrounds. The ΛCDM Silk damping µ-type distortion is not detected without additional modifications of the instrument or external data. Galactic synchrotron radiation is the most problematic source of contamination in this respect, an issue that could be mitigated by combining PIXIE data with future ground-based observations at low frequencies (ν 15 − 30 GHz). Assuming moderate external information on the synchrotron spectrum, we project an upper limit of |µ| < 3.6 × 10 −7 (95% c.l.), slightly more than one order of magnitude above the fiducial ΛCDM signal from the damping of small-scale primordial fluctuations, but a factor of 250 improvement over the current upper limit from COBE/FIRAS. This limit could be further reduced to |µ| < 9.4 × 10 −8 (95% c.l.) with more optimistic assumptions about extra low-frequency information and would rule out many alternative inflation models as well as provide new constraints on decaying particle scenarios.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 55%

Prospects for measuring cosmic microwave background spectral distortions in the presence of foregrounds

Abitbol

Chluba

Hill

et al. 2017

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

146

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“…Since the moment of last scattering at t ≈ 380, 000 yrs, these primordial photons have been streaming freely through the universe, reaching our detectors 13.7 billion years later [63]. The observed frequency spectrum is that of an almost perfect black body with a mean temperatureT = 2.72548 ± 0.00057 K [64]. These anisotropies reflect inhomogeneities in the density of the primordial plasma, which can be traced back to the curvature perturbations calculated in the previous section.…”

Section: Cmb Anisotropiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…So far, no signal has been detected. 64 Resonant non-Gaussianity.-At first order in b , the bispectrum is [37] …”

Section: Phenomenologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Inflation and String Theory

2015

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“…We take TCMB = 2.72548 (Fixsen 2009). The redshift of the drag epoch z d is given by Eisenstein & Hu (1998) …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Model-independent measurements of cosmic expansion and growth at z = 0.57 using the anisotropic clustering of CMASS galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 9

Wang

2014

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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We analyze the anisotropic two dimensional galaxy correlation function (2DCF) of the CMASS galaxy samples from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 9 (DR9) of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) data. Modeling the 2DCF fully including nonlinear effects and redshift space distortions (RSD) in the scale range of 30 to 120.01 ± 0.23, and f g (0.57)σ 8 (0.57) = 0.474 ± 0.075, where r s (z d ) is the sound horizon at the drag epoch computed using a simple integral, and f g (z) is the growth rate at redshift z, and σ 8 (z) represents the matter power spectrum normalization on 8 h −1 Mpc scale at z. We find that the scales larger than 120 h −1 Mpc are dominated by noise in the 2DCF analysis, and that the inclusion of scales 30-40 h −1 Mpc significantly tightens the RSD measurement. Our measurements are consistent with previous results using the same data, but have significantly better precision since we are using all the information from the 2DCF in the scale range of 30 to 120 h −1 Mpc. Our measurements have been marginalized over sufficiently wide priors for the relevant parameters; they can be combined with other data to probe dark energy and gravity.

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The Temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background

Cited by 1,030 publications

References 20 publications

Prospects for measuring cosmic microwave background spectral distortions in the presence of foregrounds

Prospects for measuring cosmic microwave background spectral distortions in the presence of foregrounds

Inflation and String Theory

Model-independent measurements of cosmic expansion and growth at z = 0.57 using the anisotropic clustering of CMASS galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 9

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