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arXiv · 2311.01814

The advantage of Bolometric Interferometry for controlling Galactic foreground contamination in CMB primordial B-modes measurements

Abstract

In the quest for the faint primordial B-mode polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background, three are the key requirements for any present or future experiment: an utmost sensitivity, excellent control over instrumental systematic effects and over Galactic foreground contamination. Bolometric Interferometry (BI) is a novel technique that matches them all by combining the sensitivity of bolometric detectors, the control of instrumental systematics from interferometry and a software-based, tunable, in-band spectral resolution due to its ability to perform band-splitting during data analysis (spectral imaging). In this paper, we investigate how the spectral imaging capability of BI can help in detecting residual contamination in case an over-simplified model of foreground emission is assumed in the analysis. To mimic this situation, we focus on the next generation of ground-based CMB experiment, CMB-S4, and compare its anticipated sensitivities, frequency and sky coverage with a hypothetical version of the same experiment based on BI, CMB-S4/BI, assuming that line-of-sight (LOS) frequency decorrelation is present in dust emission but is not accounted for during component separation. We show results from a Monte-Carlo analysis based on a parametric component separation method (FGBuster), highlighting how BI has the potential to diagnose the presence of foreground residuals in estimates of the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ in the case of unaccounted Galactic dust LOS frequency decorrelation.

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E. Manzan, M. Regnier, J-Ch. Hamilton, A. Mennella, J. Errard, L. Zapelli, S. A. Torchinsky, S. Paradiso, E. Battistelli, M. Bersanelli, P. De Bernardis, M. De Petris, G. D'Alessandro, M. Gervasi, S. Masi, M. Piat, E. Rasztocky, G. E Romero, C. G. Scoccola, M. Zannoni, the QUBIC Collaboration. 2023-11-03. The advantage of Bolometric Interferometry for controlling Galactic foreground contamination in CMB primordial B-modes measurements. https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.01814

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