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Blake D. Sherwin

Publications and source records attributed to Blake D. Sherwin.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
arXiv2024

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: DR6 Gravitational Lensing Map and Cosmological Parameters

We present cosmological constraints from a gravitational lensing mass map covering 9400 sq. deg. reconstructed from CMB measurements made by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) from 2017 to 2021. In combination with BAO measurements (from SDSS and 6dF), we obtain the amplitude of matter fluctuations $σ_8 = 0.819 \pm 0.015$ at 1.8% precision, $S_8\equivσ_8({Ω_{\rm m}}/0.3)^{0.5}=0.840\pm0.028$ and the Hubble constant $H_0= (68.3 \pm 1.1)\, \text{km}\,\text{s}^{-1}\,\text{Mpc}^{-1}$ at 1.6% precision. A joint constraint with CMB lensing measured by the Planck satellite yields even more precise values: $σ_8 = 0.812 \pm 0.013$, $S_8\equivσ_8({Ω_{\rm m}}/0.3)^{0.5}=0.831\pm0.023$ and $H_0= (68.1 \pm 1.0)\, \text{km}\,\text{s}^{-1}\,\text{Mpc}^{-1}$. These measurements agree well with $Λ$CDM-model extrapolations from the CMB anisotropies measured by Planck. To compare these constraints to those from the KiDS, DES, and HSC galaxy surveys, we revisit those data sets with a uniform set of assumptions, and find $S_8$ from all three surveys are lower than that from ACT+Planck lensing by varying levels ranging from 1.7-2.1$σ$. These results motivate further measurements and comparison, not just between the CMB anisotropies and galaxy lensing, but also between CMB lensing probing $z\sim 0.5-5$ on mostly-linear scales and galaxy lensing at $z\sim 0.5$ on smaller scales. We combine our CMB lensing measurements with CMB anisotropies to constrain extensions of $Λ$CDM, limiting the sum of the neutrino masses to $\sum m_ν < 0.13$ eV (95% c.l.), for example. Our results provide independent confirmation that the universe is spatially flat, conforms with general relativity, and is described remarkably well by the $Λ$CDM model, while paving a promising path for neutrino physics with gravitational lensing from upcoming ground-based CMB surveys.

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arXiv2024

Constraining dark energy with the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect

We use the integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect, by now detectable at $\sim 5σ$ within the context of $Λ$CDM cosmologies, to place strong constraints on dynamical dark energy theories. Working within an effective field theory framework for dark energy we find that including ISW constraints from galaxy-CMB cross-correlations significantly strengthens existing large-scale structure constraints, yielding bounds consistent with $Λ$CDM and approximately reducing the viable parameter space by $\sim 70\%$. This is a direct consequence of ${\cal O}(1)$ changes induced in these cross-correlations by otherwise viable dark energy models, which we discuss in detail. We compute constraints by adapting the $Λ$CDM ISW likelihood from [1] for dynamical dark energy models using galaxy data from 2MASS, WISE $\times$ SuperCOSMOS, SDSS-DR12, QSOs and NVSS, CMB data from Planck 18, and BAO and RSD large scale structure measurements from BOSS and 6dF. We show constraints both in terms of EFT-inspired $α_i$ and phenomenological $μ/Σ$ parametrisations. Furthermore we discuss the approximations involved and related aspects of bias modelling in detail and highlight what these constraints imply for the underlying dark energy theories.

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arXiv2024

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Cosmology from cross-correlations of unWISE galaxies and ACT DR6 CMB lensing

We present tomographic measurements of structure growth using cross-correlations of Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) DR6 and Planck CMB lensing maps with the unWISE Blue and Green galaxy samples, which span the redshift ranges $0.2 \lesssim z \lesssim 1.1$ and $0.3 \lesssim z \lesssim 1.8$, respectively. We improve on prior unWISE cross-correlations not just by making use of the new, high-precision ACT DR6 lensing maps, but also by including additional spectroscopic data for redshift calibration and by analysing our measurements with a more flexible theoretical model. An extensive suite of systematic and null tests within a blind analysis framework ensures that our results are robust. We determine the amplitude of matter fluctuations at low redshifts ($z\simeq 0.2-1.6$), finding $S_8 \equiv σ_8 (Ω_m / 0.3)^{0.5} = 0.813 \pm 0.021$ using the ACT cross-correlation alone and $S_8 = 0.810 \pm 0.015$ with a combination of Planck and ACT cross-correlations; these measurements are fully consistent with the predictions from primary CMB measurements assuming standard structure growth. The addition of Baryon Acoustic Oscillation data breaks the degeneracy between $σ_8$ and $Ω_m$, allowing us to measure $σ_8 = 0.813 \pm 0.020$ from the cross-correlation of unWISE with ACT and $σ_8 = 0.813\pm 0.015$ from the combination of cross-correlations with ACT and Planck. These results also agree with the expectations from primary CMB extrapolations in $Λ$CDM cosmology; the consistency of $σ_8$ derived from our two redshift samples at $z \sim 0.6$ and $1.1$ provides a further check of our cosmological model. Our results suggest that structure formation on linear scales is well described by $Λ$CDM even down to low redshifts $z\lesssim 1$.

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arXiv2024

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Reionization kSZ trispectrum methodology and limits

Patchy reionization generates kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (kSZ) anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Large-scale velocity perturbations along the line of sight modulate the small-scale kSZ power spectrum, leading to a trispectrum (or four-point function) in the CMB that depends on the physics of reionization. We investigate the challenges in detecting this trispectrum and use tools developed for CMB lensing, such as realization-dependent bias subtraction and cross-correlation based estimators, to counter uncertainties in the instrumental noise and assumed CMB power spectrum. We also find that both lensing and extragalactic foregrounds can impart larger trispectrum contributions than the reionization kSZ signal. We present a range of mitigation methods for both of these sources of contamination, validated on microwave-sky simulations. We use ACT DR6 and Planck data to calculate an upper limit on the reionization kSZ trispectrum from a measurement dominated by foregrounds. The upper limit is about 50 times the signal predicted from recent simulations.

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arXiv2024

Accelerated inference on accelerated cosmic expansion: New constraints on axion-like early dark energy with DESI BAO and ACT DR6 CMB lensing

The early dark energy (EDE) extension to $Λ$CDM has been proposed as a candidate scenario to resolve the "Hubble tension". We present new constraints on the EDE model by incorporating new data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) survey and CMB lensing measurements from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) DR6 and \textit{Planck} NPIPE data. We do not find evidence for EDE. The maximum fractional contribution of EDE to the total energy density is $f_\mathrm{EDE}< 0.091 \; (95\% \; \mathrm{CL} )$ from our baseline combination of \textit{Planck} CMB, CMB lensing, and DESI BAO. Our strongest constraints on EDE come from the combination of \textit{Planck} CMB and CMB lensing alone, yielding $f_\mathrm{EDE}< 0.070 \; (95\% \; \mathrm{CL} )$. We also explore extensions of $Λ$CDM beyond the EDE parameters by treating the total neutrino mass as a free parameter, finding $\sum m_ν< 0.096 \,\, {\rm eV} \; (95\% \; \mathrm{CL} )$ and $f_\mathrm{EDE}< 0.087 \; (95\% \; \mathrm{CL} )$. For the first time in EDE analyses, we perform Bayesian parameter estimation using neural network emulators of cosmological observables, which are on the order of a hundred times faster than full Boltzmann solutions.

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arXiv2024

Constraining gravity with a new precision $E_G$ estimator using Planck + SDSS BOSS

The $E_G$ statistic is a discriminating probe of gravity developed to test the prediction of general relativity (GR) for the relation between gravitational potential and clustering on the largest scales in the observable universe. We present a novel high-precision estimator for the $E_G$ statistic using CMB lensing and galaxy clustering correlations that carefully matches the effective redshifts across the different measurement components to minimize corrections. A suite of detailed tests is performed to characterize the estimator's accuracy, its sensitivity to assumptions and analysis choices and the non-Gaussianity of the estimator's uncertainty is characterized. After finalization of the estimator, it is applied to $\textit{Planck}$ CMB lensing and SDSS CMASS and LOWZ galaxy data. We report the first harmonic space measurement of $E_G$ using the LOWZ sample and CMB lensing and also updated constraints using the final CMASS sample and the latest $\textit{Planck}$ CMB lensing map. We find $E_G^{Planck+CMASS} = 0.36^{+0.06}_{-0.05}$ (68.27%) and $E_G^{\rm \textit{Planck}+LOWZ} = 0.40^{+0.11}_{-0.09} $ (68.27%), with additional subdominant systematic error budget estimates of 2% and 3% respectively. Using $Ω_{\rm m,0}$ constraints from $\textit{Planck}$ and SDSS BAO observations, $Λ$CDM-GR predicts $E_G^{\rm GR} (z = 0.555) = 0.401 \pm 0.005$ and $E_G^{\rm GR} (z = 0.316) = 0.452 \pm 0.005$ at the effective redshifts of the CMASS and LOWZ based measurements. We report the measurement to be in good statistical agreement with the $Λ$CDM-GR prediction, and report that the measurement is also consistent with the more general GR prediction of scale-independence for $E_G$. This work provides a carefully constructed and calibrated statistic with which $E_G$ measurements can be confidently and accurately obtained with upcoming survey data.

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arXiv2023

Impact of Galactic dust non-Gaussianity on searches for B-modes from inflation

A key challenge in the search for primordial B-modes is the presence of polarized Galactic foregrounds, especially thermal dust emission. Power-spectrum-based analysis methods generally assume the foregrounds to be Gaussian random fields when constructing a likelihood and computing the covariance matrix. In this paper, we investigate how non-Gaussianity in the dust field instead affects CMB and foreground parameter inference in the context of inflationary B-mode searches, capturing this effect via modifications to the dust power-spectrum covariance matrix. For upcoming experiments such as the Simons Observatory, we find no dependence of the tensor-to-scalar ratio uncertainty $σ(r)$ on the degree of dust non-Gaussianity or the nature of the dust covariance matrix. We provide an explanation of this result, noting that when frequency decorrelation is negligible, dust in mid-frequency channels is cleaned using high-frequency data in a way that is independent of the spatial statistics of dust. We show that our results hold also for non-zero levels of frequency decorrelation that are compatible with existing data. We find, however, that neglecting the impact of dust non-Gaussianity in the covariance matrix can lead to inaccuracies in goodness-of-fit metrics. Care must thus be taken when using such metrics to test B-mode spectra and models, although we show that any such problems can be mitigated by using only cleaned spectrum combinations when computing goodness-of-fit statistics.

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arXiv2023

Detection of the CMB lensing -- galaxy bispectrum

We present a first measurement of the galaxy-galaxy-CMB lensing bispectrum. The signal is detected at $26σ$ and $22σ$ significance using two samples from the unWISE galaxy catalog at mean redshifts $\bar{z}=0.6$ and $1.1$ and lensing reconstructions from Planck PR4. We employ a compressed bispectrum estimator based on the cross-correlation between the square of the galaxy overdensity field and CMB lensing reconstructions. We present a series of consistency tests to ensure the cosmological origin of our signal and rule out potential foreground contamination. We compare our results to model predictions from a halo model previously fit to only two-point spectra, finding reasonable agreement when restricting our analysis to large scales. Such measurements of the CMB lensing galaxy bispectrum will have several important cosmological applications, including constraining the uncertain higher-order bias parameters that currently limit lensing cross-correlation analyses.

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arXiv2023

Canonical Hubble-Tension-Resolving Early Dark Energy Cosmologies are Inconsistent with the Lyman-$α$ Forest

Current cosmological data exhibit discordance between indirect and some direct inferences of the present-day expansion rate, $H_0$. Early dark energy (EDE), which briefly increases the cosmic expansion rate prior to recombination, is a leading scenario for resolving this "Hubble tension" while preserving a good fit to cosmic microwave background (CMB) data. However, this comes at the cost of changes in parameters that affect structure formation in the late-time universe, including the spectral index of scalar perturbations, $n_s$. Here, we present the first constraints on axion-like EDE using data from the Lyman-$α$ forest, i.e., absorption lines imprinted in background quasar spectra by neutral hydrogen gas along the line of sight. We consider two independent measurements of the one-dimensional Ly$α$ forest flux power spectrum, from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS eBOSS) and from the MIKE/HIRES and X-Shooter spectrographs. We combine these with a baseline dataset comprised of Planck CMB data and baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements. Combining the eBOSS Ly$α$ data with the CMB and BAO dataset reduces the 95% confidence level (CL) upper bound on the maximum fractional contribution of EDE to the cosmic energy budget, $f_{\rm EDE}$, from 0.07 to 0.03 and constrains $H_0=67.9_{-0.4}^{+0.4}$ km/s/Mpc (68% CL), with maximum a posteriori value $H_0=67.9$ km/s/Mpc. Similar results are obtained for the MIKE/HIRES and X-Shooter Ly$α$ data. Our Ly$α$-based EDE constraints yield $H_0$ values that are in $>4σ$ tension with the SH0ES distance-ladder measurement and are driven by the preference of the Ly$α$ forest data for $n_s$ values lower than those required by EDE cosmologies that fit Planck CMB data. Taken at face value, the Ly$α$ forest severely constrains canonical EDE models that could resolve the Hubble tension.

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arXiv2023

CMB lensing with shear-only reconstruction on the full sky

Reconstruction of gravitational lensing effects in the CMB from current and upcoming surveys is still dominated by temperature anisotropies. Extragalactic foregrounds in temperature maps can induce significant biases in the lensing power spectrum obtained with the standard quadratic estimators. Techniques such as masking cannot remove these foregrounds fully, and the residuals can still lead to large biases if unaccounted for. In this paper, we study the "shear-only" estimator, an example of a class of geometric methods that suppress extragalactic foreground contamination while making only minimal assumptions about foreground properties. The shear-only estimator has only been formulated in the flat-sky limit and so is not easily applied to wide surveys. Here, we derive the full-sky version of the shear-only estimator and its generalisation to an $m=2$ multipole estimator that has improved performance for lensing reconstruction on smaller scales. The multipole estimator is generally not separable, and so is expensive to compute. We explore separable approximations based on a singular-value decomposition, which allow efficient evaluation of the estimator with real-space methods. Finally, we apply these estimators to simulations that include extragalactic foregrounds and verify their efficacy in suppressing foreground biases.

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arXiv2023

New probe of inflationary gravitational waves: cross-correlations of lensed primary CMB B-modes with large-scale structure

We propose a new probe of inflationary gravitational waves (IGWs): the cross-correlation of the lensing of inflationary $B$-mode polarization with a large-scale structure (LSS) tracer, which can also be a cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing map. This is equivalent to measuring a three-point function of two CMB $B$-modes and an LSS tracer. We forecast expected $1\,σ$ constraints on the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$, albeit with a simplistic foreground treatment, and find constraints of $σ_r \simeq 7 \times 10^{-3}$ from the correlation of CMB-S4-Deep $B$-mode lensing and LSST galaxies, $σ_r \simeq 5 \times 10^{-3}$ from the correlation of CMB-S4-Deep $B$-mode lensing and CMB-S4-Deep CMB lensing, and $σ_r \simeq 10^{-2}$ from the correlation of LiteBIRD $B$-mode lensing and CMB-S4-Wide lensing. Because this probe is inherently non-Gaussian, simple Gaussian foregrounds will not produce any biases to the measurement of $r$. While a detailed investigation of non-Gaussian foreground contamination for different cross-correlations will be essential, this observable has the potential to be a useful probe of IGWs, which, due to different sensitivity to many potential sources of systematic errors, can be complementary to standard methods for constraining $r$.

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arXiv2023

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Mitigating the impact of extragalactic foregrounds for the DR6 CMB lensing analysis

We investigate the impact and mitigation of extragalactic foregrounds for the CMB lensing power spectrum analysis of Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) data release 6 (DR6) data. Two independent microwave sky simulations are used to test a range of mitigation strategies. We demonstrate that finding and then subtracting point sources, finding and then subtracting models of clusters, and using a profile bias-hardened lensing estimator, together reduce the fractional biases to well below statistical uncertainties, with the inferred lensing amplitude, $A_{\mathrm{lens}}$, biased by less than $0.2σ$. We also show that another method where a model for the cosmic infrared background (CIB) contribution is deprojected and high frequency data from Planck is included has similar performance. Other frequency-cleaned options do not perform as well, incurring either a large noise cost, or resulting in biased recovery of the lensing spectrum. In addition to these simulation-based tests, we also present null tests performed on the ACT DR6 data which test for sensitivity of our lensing spectrum estimation to differences in foreground levels between the two ACT frequencies used, while nulling the CMB lensing signal. These tests pass whether the nulling is performed at the map or bandpower level. The CIB-deprojected measurement performed on the DR6 data is consistent with our baseline measurement, implying contamination from the CIB is unlikely to significantly bias the DR6 lensing spectrum. This collection of tests gives confidence that the ACT DR6 lensing measurements and cosmological constraints presented in companion papers to this work are robust to extragalactic foregrounds.

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arXiv2023

Determining the Hubble Constant without the Sound Horizon: Perspectives with Future Galaxy Surveys

$H_0$ constraints from galaxy surveys are sourced by the geometric properties of two standardisable rulers: the sound horizon scale, $r_s$, and the matter-radiation equality scale, $k_{\rm eq}$. While most analyses over the last decade have focused on the first scale, recent work has emphasised that the second can provide an independent source of information about the expansion rate of the universe. Recent approaches to obtain a sound-horizon-independent measurement of $H_0$ from the equality scale have avoided $r_s$-based information by removing the sound-horizon-calibrating prior on the baryon density. We present a new method to marginalise over $r_s$; this allows baryon information to be retained enabling tighter parameter constraints. For a Euclid-like spectroscopic survey, we forecast sound-horizon-independent $H_0$ constraints of $σ_{H_0} = 0.7\rm{\ km\ s^{-1}\ Mpc^{-1}}$ for our method using the equality scale, compared with $σ_{H_0} = 0.5\rm{\ km\ s^{-1}\ Mpc^{-1}}$ from the sound horizon. Upcoming equality scale $H_0$ measurements thus can be highly competitive, although we caution that the impact of observational systematics on such measurements still needs to be investigated in detail. Applying our new approach to the BOSS power spectrum gives $H_0 = 69.5^{+3.0}_{-3.5}\rm{\ km\ s^{-1}\ Mpc^{-1}}$ from equality alone, somewhat tighter than previous constraints. Consistency of $r_s$- and $k_{\rm eq}$-based $H_0$ measurements can provide a valuable internal consistency test of the cosmological model; as an example, we consider the change in $H_0$ created by early dark energy. Assuming the \textit{Planck}+SH0ES best-fit EDE model we find a $2.6σ$ shift ($ΔH_0 = 2.6\rm{\ km\ s^{-1}\ Mpc^{-1}}$) between the two measurements for Euclid; if we instead assume the ACT best-fit model, this increases to $9.0σ$ ($ΔH_0 = 7.8\rm{\ km\ s^{-1}\ Mpc^{-1}}$).

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arXiv2023

Restoring cosmological concordance with early dark energy and massive neutrinos?

The early dark energy (EDE) solution to the Hubble tension comes at the cost of an increased clustering amplitude that has been argued to worsen the fit to galaxy clustering data. We explore whether freeing the total neutrino mass $M_ν$, which can suppress small-scale structure growth, improves EDE's fit to galaxy clustering. Using Planck Cosmic Microwave Background and BOSS galaxy clustering data, a Bayesian analysis shows that freeing $M_ν$ does not appreciably increase the inferred EDE fraction $f_{\rm EDE}$: we find the 95% C.L. upper limits $f_{\rm EDE}<0.092$ and $M_ν<0.15\,{\rm eV}$. Similarly, in a frequentist profile likelihood setting (where our results support previous findings that prior volume effects are important), we find that the baseline EDE model (with $M_ν=0.06\,{\rm eV}$) provides the overall best fit. For instance, compared to baseline EDE, a model with $M_ν=0.24\,{\rm eV}$ maintains the same $H_0$(km/s/Mpc)=(70.08, 70.11, respectively) whilst decreasing $S_8$=(0.837, 0.826) to the $Λ$CDM level, but worsening the fit significantly by $Δχ^2=7.5$. For the datasets used, these results are driven not by the clustering amplitude, but by background modifications to the late-time expansion rate due to massive neutrinos, which worsen the fit to measurements of the BAO scale.

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arXiv2022

Determining the Hubble Constant without the Sound Horizon: A $3.6\%$ Constraint on $H_0$ from Galaxy Surveys, CMB Lensing and Supernovae

Many theoretical resolutions to the so-called "Hubble tension" rely on modifying the sound horizon at recombination, $r_s$, and thus the acoustic scale used as a standard ruler in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and large scale structure (LSS) datasets. As shown in a number of recent works, these observables can also be used to compute $r_s$-independent constraints on $H_0$ by making use of the horizon scale at matter-radiation equality, $k_{\rm eq}$, which has different sensitivity to high redshift physics than $r_s$. As such, $r_s$- and $k_{\rm eq}$-based measurements of $H_0$ (within a $Λ$CDM framework) may differ if there is new physics present pre-recombination. In this work, we present the tightest constraints on the latter from current data, finding $H_0=64.8^{+2.2}_{-2.5}$ at 68% CL (in $\mathrm{km}\,\mathrm{s}^{-1}\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ units) from a combination of BOSS galaxy power spectra, Planck CMB lensing, and the newly released Pantheon+ supernova constraints, as well as physical priors on the baryon density, neutrino mass, and spectral index. The BOSS and Planck measurements have different degeneracy directions, leading to the improved combined constraints, with a bound of $H_0 = 67.1^{+2.5}_{-2.9}$ ($63.6^{+2.9}_{-3.6}$) from BOSS (Planck) alone. The results show some dependence on the neutrino mass bounds, with the constraint broadening to $H_0 = 68.0^{+2.9}_{-3.2}$ if we instead impose a weak prior on $\sum m_ν$ from terrestrial experiments, or shifting to $H_0 = 64.6\pm2.4$ if the neutrino mass is fixed to its minimal value. Even without dependence on the sound horizon, our results are in $\approx 3σ$ tension with those obtained from the Cepheid-calibrated distance ladder, which begins to cause problems for new physics models that vary $H_0$ by changing acoustic physics or the expansion history immediately prior to recombination.

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arXiv2022

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Constraints on Pre-Recombination Early Dark Energy

The early dark energy (EDE) scenario aims to increase the value of the Hubble constant ($H_0$) inferred from cosmic microwave background (CMB) data over that found in $Λ$CDM, via the introduction of a new form of energy density in the early universe. The EDE component briefly accelerates cosmic expansion just prior to recombination, which reduces the physical size of the sound horizon imprinted in the CMB. Previous work has found that non-zero EDE is not preferred by Planck CMB power spectrum data alone, which yield a 95% confidence level (CL) upper limit $f_{\rm EDE} < 0.087$ on the maximal fractional contribution of the EDE field to the cosmic energy budget. In this paper, we fit the EDE model to CMB data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) Data Release 4. We find that a combination of ACT, large-scale Planck TT (similar to WMAP), Planck CMB lensing, and BAO data prefers the existence of EDE at $>99.7$% CL: $f_{\rm EDE} = 0.091^{+0.020}_{-0.036}$, with $H_0 = 70.9^{+1.0}_{-2.0}$ km/s/Mpc (both 68% CL). From a model-selection standpoint, we find that EDE is favored over $Λ$CDM by these data at roughly $3σ$ significance. In contrast, a joint analysis of the full Planck and ACT data yields no evidence for EDE, as previously found for Planck alone. We show that the preference for EDE in ACT alone is driven by its TE and EE power spectrum data. The tight constraint on EDE from Planck alone is driven by its high-$\ell$ TT power spectrum data. Understanding whether these differing constraints are physical in nature, due to systematics, or simply a rare statistical fluctuation is of high priority. The best-fit EDE models to ACT and Planck exhibit coherent differences across a wide range of multipoles in TE and EE, indicating that a powerful test of this scenario is anticipated with near-future data from ACT and other ground-based experiments.

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arXiv2022

Delensing the CMB with the cosmic infrared background: the impact of foregrounds

The most promising avenue for detecting primordial gravitational waves from cosmic inflation is through measurements of degree-scale CMB $B$-mode polarisation. This approach must face the challenge posed by gravitational lensing of the CMB, which obscures the signal of interest. Fortunately, the lensing effects can be partially removed by combining high-resolution $E$-mode measurements with an estimate of the projected matter distribution. For near-future experiments, the best estimate of the latter will arise from co-adding internal reconstructions (derived from the CMB itself) with external tracers such as the cosmic infrared background (CIB). In this work, we characterise how foregrounds impact the delensing procedure when CIB intensity, $I$, is used as the matter tracer. We find that higher-point functions of the CIB and Galactic dust such as $\langle BEI \rangle_{c}$ and $\langle EIEI \rangle_{c}$ can, in principle, bias the power spectrum of delensed $B$-modes. To quantify these, we first estimate the dust residuals in currently-available CIB maps and upcoming, foreground-cleaned Simons Observatory CMB data. Then, using non-Gaussian simulations of Galactic dust -- extrapolated to the relevant frequencies, assuming the spectral index of polarised dust emission to be fixed at the value determined by Planck -- we show that the bias to any primordial signal is small compared to statistical errors for ground-based experiments, but might be significant for space-based experiments probing very large angular scales. However, mitigation techniques based on multi-frequency cleaning appear to be very effective. We also show, by means of an analytic model, that the bias arising from the higher-point functions of the CIB itself ought to be negligible.

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arXiv2022

The Simons Observatory: Constraining inflationary gravitational waves with multi-tracer B-mode delensing

We introduce and validate a delensing framework for the Simons Observatory (SO), which will be used to improve constraints on inflationary gravitational waves (IGWs) by reducing the lensing noise in measurements of the $B$-modes in CMB polarization. SO will initially observe CMB by using three small aperture telescopes and one large-aperture telescope. While polarization maps from small-aperture telescopes will be used to constrain IGWs, the internal CMB lensing maps used to delens will be reconstructed from data from the large-aperture telescope. Since lensing maps obtained from the SO data will be noise-dominated on sub-degree scales, the SO lensing framework constructs a template for lensing-induced $B$-modes by combining internal CMB lensing maps with maps of the cosmic infrared background from Planck as well as galaxy density maps from the LSST survey. We construct a likelihood for constraining the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ that contains auto- and cross-spectra between observed $B$-modes and the lensing $B$-mode template. We test our delensing analysis pipeline on map-based simulations containing survey non-idealities, but that, for this initial exploration, does not include contamination from Galactic and extragalactic foregrounds. We find that the SO survey masking and inhomogeneous and atmospheric noise have very little impact on the delensing performance, and the $r$ constraint becomes $σ(r)\approx 0.0015$ which is close to that obtained from the idealized forecasts in the absence of the Galactic foreground and is nearly a factor of two tighter than without delensing. We also find that uncertainties in the external large-scale structure tracers used in our multi-tracer delensing pipeline lead to bias much smaller than the $1\,σ$ statistical uncertainties.

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