arXiv subjects

H. K. Eriksen

Publications and source records attributed to H. K. Eriksen.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

BeyondPlanck XII. Cosmological parameter constraints with end-to-end error propagation

We present cosmological parameter constraints as estimated using the Bayesian BeyondPlanck (BP) analysis framework. This method supports seamless end-to-end error propagation from raw time-ordered data to final cosmological parameters. As a first demonstration of the method, we analyze time-ordered Planck LFI observations, combined with selected external data (WMAP 33-61GHz, Planck HFI DR4 353 and 857GHz, and Haslam 408MHz) in the form of pixelized maps which are used to break critical astrophysical degeneracies. Overall, all results are generally in good agreement with previously reported values from Planck 2018 and WMAP, with the largest relative difference for any parameter of about 1 sigma when considering only temperature multipoles between 29<l<601. In cases where there are differences, we note that the BP results are generally slightly closer to the high-l HFI-dominated Planck 2018 results than previous analyses, suggesting slightly less tension between low and high multipoles. Using low-l polarization information from LFI and WMAP, we find a best-fit value of tau=0.066 +/- 0.013, which is higher than the low value of tau=0.051 +/- 0.006 derived from Planck 2018 and slightly lower than the value of 0.069 +/- 0.011 derived from joint analysis of official LFI and WMAP products. Most importantly, however, we find that the uncertainty derived in the BP processing is about 30% larger than when analyzing the official products, after taking into account the different sky coverage. We argue that this is due to marginalizing over a more complete model of instrumental and astrophysical parameters, and this results in both more reliable and more rigorously defined uncertainties. We find that about 2000 Monte Carlo samples are required to achieve robust convergence for low-resolution CMB covariance matrix with 225 independent modes.

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arXiv2022

BeyondPlanck VII. Bayesian estimation of gain and absolute calibration for CMB experiments

We present a Bayesian calibration algorithm for CMB observations as implemented within the global end-to-end BeyondPlanck (BP) framework, and apply this to the Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) data. Following the most recent Planck analysis, we decompose the full time-dependent gain into a sum of three orthogonal components: One absolute calibration term, common to all detectors; one time-independent term that can vary between detectors; and one time-dependent component that is allowed to vary between one-hour pointing periods. Each term is then sampled conditionally on all other parameters in the global signal model through Gibbs sampling. The absolute calibration is sampled using only the orbital dipole as a reference source, while the two relative gain components are sampled using the full sky signal, including the orbital and Solar CMB dipoles, CMB fluctuations, and foreground contributions. We discuss various aspects of the data that influence gain estimation, including the dipole/polarization quadrupole degeneracy and anomalous jumps in the instrumental gain. Comparing our solution to previous pipelines, we find good agreement in general, with relative deviations of -0.67% (-0.84%) for 30 GHz, 0.12% (-0.04%) for 44 GHz and -0.03% (-0.64%) for 70 GHz, compared to Planck DR4 (Planck 2018). The deviations we find are within expected error bounds, and we attribute them to differences in data usage and general approach between the pipelines. In particular, the BP calibration is performed globally, resulting in better inter-frequency consistency. Additionally, WMAP observations are used actively in the BP analysis, which breaks degeneracies in the Planck data set and results in better agreement with WMAP. Although our presentation and algorithm are currently oriented toward LFI processing, the procedure is fully generalizable to other experiments.

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arXiv2022

BeyondPlanck XVI. Limits on Large-Scale Polarized Anomalous Microwave Emission from Planck LFI and WMAP

We constrain the level of polarized anomalous microwave emission (AME) on large angular scales using $\textit{Planck}$ LFI and $\textit{WMAP}$ polarization data within a Bayesian CMB analysis framework. We model synchrotron emission with a power-law spectral energy distribution, and the sum of AME and thermal dust emission through linear regression with the $\textit{Planck}$ HFI 353 GHz data. This template-based dust emission model allows us to constrain the level of polarized AME while making minimal assumptions on its frequency dependence. We neglect cosmic microwave background fluctuations, but show through simulations that these have a minor impact on the results. We find that the resulting AME polarization fraction confidence limit is sensitive to the polarized synchrotron spectral index prior, and for priors steeper than $β_{\mathrm{s}} = -3.1\pm0.1$ we find an upper limit of $p_{\mathrm{AME}}^{\rm max}\lesssim 0.6\,\%$ ($95\,\%$ confidence). In contrast, for $β_{\mathrm{s}}=-3.0\pm0.1$, we find a nominal detection of $p_{\mathrm{AME}}=2.5\pm1.0\,\%$ ($95\,\%$ confidence). These data are thus not strong enough to simultaneously and robustly constrain both polarized synchrotron emission and AME, and our main result is therefore a constraint on the AME polarization fraction explicitly as a function of $β_\mathrm{s}$. Combining the current $\textit{Planck}$ and $\textit{WMAP}$ observations with measurements from high-sensitivity low-frequency experiments such as C-BASS and QUIJOTE will be critical to improve these limits further.

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arXiv2022

A Simulation-Based Method for Correcting Mode Coupling in CMB Angular Power Spectra

Modern CMB analysis pipelines regularly employ complex time-domain filters, beam models, masking, and other techniques during the production of sky maps and their corresponding angular power spectra. However, these processes can generate couplings between multipoles from the same spectrum and from different spectra, in addition to the typical power attenuation. Within the context of pseudo-$C_\ell$ based, MASTER-style analyses, the net effect of the time-domain filtering is commonly approximated by a multiplicative transfer function, $F_{\ell}$, that can fail to capture mode mixing and is dependent on the spectrum of the signal. To address these shortcomings, we have developed a simulation-based spectral correction approach that constructs a two-dimensional transfer matrix, $J_{\ell\ell'}$, which contains information about mode mixing in addition to mode attenuation. We demonstrate the application of this approach on data from the first flight of the SPIDER balloon-borne CMB experiment.

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arXiv2022

Polarization angle requirements for CMB B-mode experiments. Application to the LiteBIRD satellite

A methodology to provide the polarization angle requirements for different sets of detectors, at a given frequency of a CMB polarization experiment, is presented. The uncertainties in the polarization angle of each detector set are related to a given bias on the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ parameter. The approach is grounded in using a linear combination of the detector sets to obtain the CMB polarization signal. In addition, assuming that the uncertainties on the polarization angle are in the small angle limit (lower than a few degrees), it is possible to derive analytic expressions to establish the requirements. The methodology also accounts for possible correlations among detectors, that may originate from the optics, wafers, etc. The approach is applied to the LiteBIRD space mission. We show that, for the most restrictive case (i.e., full correlation of the polarization angle systematics among detector sets), the requirements on the polarization angle uncertainties are of around 1 arcmin at the most sensitive frequency bands (i.e., $\approx 150$ GHz) and of few tens of arcmin at the lowest (i.e., $\approx 40$ GHz) and highest (i.e., $\approx 400$ GHz) observational bands. Conversely, for the least restrictive case (i.e., no correlation of the polarization angle systematics among detector sets), the requirements are $\approx 5$ times less restrictive than for the previous scenario. At the global and the telescope levels, polarization angle knowledge of a few arcmins is sufficient for correlated global systematic errors and can be relaxed by a factor of two for fully uncorrelated errors in detector polarization angle. The reported uncertainty levels are needed in order to have the bias on $r$ due to systematics below the limit established by the LiteBIRD collaboration.

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arXiv2022

BeyondPlanck V. Minimal ADC Corrections for Planck LFI

We describe the correction procedure for Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) differential non-linearities (DNL) adopted in the Bayesian end-to-end BeyondPlanck analysis framework. This method is nearly identical to that developed for the official LFI Data Processing Center (DPC) analysis, and relies on the binned rms noise profile of each detector data stream. However, rather than building the correction profile directly from the raw rms profile, we first fit a Gaussian to each significant ADC-induced rms decrement, and then derive the corresponding correction model from this smooth model. The main advange of this approach is that only samples which are significantly affected by ADC DNLs are corrected. The new corrections are only applied to data for which there is a clear detection of the non-linearities, and for which they perform at least comparably with the DPC corrections. Out of a total of 88 LFI data streams (sky and reference load for each of the 44 detectors) we apply the new minimal ADC corrections in 25 cases, and maintain the DPC corrections in 8 cases. All these correctsion are applited to 44 or 70 GHz channels, while, as in previous analyses, none of the 30 GHz ADCs show significant evidence of non-linearity. By comparing the BeyondPlanck and DPC ADC correction methods, we estimate that the residual ADC uncertainty is about two orders of magnitude below the total noise of both the 44 and 70 GHz channels, and their impact on current cosmological parameter estimation is small. However, we also show that non-idealities in the ADC corrections can generate sharp stripes in the final frequency maps, and these could be important for future joint analyses with HFI, WMAP, or other datasets. We therefore conclude that, although the existing corrections are adequate for LFI-based cosmological parameter analysis, further work on LFI ADC corrections is still warranted.

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arXiv2022

Cosmic Birefringence from Planck Public Release 4

We search for the signature of parity-violating physics in the Cosmic Microwave Background using Planck polarization data from the Public Release 4 (PR4 or $\mathtt{NPIPE}$). For nearly full-sky data, we initially find a birefringence angle $β=0.30^\circ\pm0.11^\circ$ ($68\%$~C.L.). We also find that the values of $β$ decrease as we enlarge the Galactic mask, which can be interpreted as the effect of polarized foreground emission. We use two independent approaches to model this effect and mitigate its impact on $β$. Although results are promising, and the good agreement between both models is encouraging, we do not assign cosmological significance to the measured value of $β$ until we improve our knowledge of the foreground polarization. Acknowledging that the miscalibration of polarization angles is not the only instrumental systematic that can create spurious TB and EB correlations, we also perform a detailed study of $\mathtt{NPIPE}$ end-to-end simulations to prove that our measurements of $β$ are not significantly affected by any of the known systematics.

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arXiv2022

Cosmic Birefringence from Planck Data Release 4

We search for the signature of parity-violating physics in the cosmic microwave background, called cosmic birefringence, using the Planck data release 4. We initially find a birefringence angle of $β=0.30\pm0.11$ (68% C.L.) for nearly full-sky data. The values of $β$ decrease as we enlarge the Galactic mask, which can be interpreted as the effect of polarized foreground emission. Two independent ways to model this effect are used to mitigate the systematic impact on $β$ for different sky fractions. We choose not to assign cosmological significance to the measured value of $β$ until we improve our knowledge of the foreground polarization.

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arXiv2022

BeyondPlanck XV. Polarized foreground emission between 30 and 70 GHz

We constrain polarized foreground emission between 30 and 70 GHz with the Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) and WMAP data within the global Bayesian BeyondPlanck framework. We combine for the first time full-resolution Planck LFI time-ordered data with low-resolution WMAP sky maps at 33, 40 and 61 GHz. Spectral parameters are fit with a likelihood defined at the native resolution of each frequency channel. This analysis represents the first implementation of true multi-resolution component separation applied to CMB observations for both amplitude and spectral energy distribution (SED) parameters. For synchrotron emission, we approximate the SED as a power-law in frequency and find that the low signal-to-noise ratio of the current data strongly limits the number of free parameters that may be robustly constrained. We partition the sky into four large disjoint regions (High Latitude; Galactic Spur; Galactic Plane; and Galactic Center), each associated with its own power-law index. We find that the High Latitude region is prior-dominated, while the Galactic Center region is contaminated by residual instrumental systematics. The two remaining regions appear to be signal-dominated, and for these we derive spectral indices of $β_{\mathrm s}^{\mathrm{Spur}}=-3.17\pm0.06$ and $β_{\mathrm s}^{\mathrm{Plane}}=-3.03\pm0.07$, in good agreement with previous results. For thermal dust emission we assume a modified blackbody model and we fit a single power-law index across the full sky. We find $β_{\mathrm{d}}=1.64\pm0.03$, which is slightly steeper than reported from Planck HFI data, but still statistically consistent at the 2$σ$ confidence level.

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arXiv2022

BeyondPlanck X. Bandpass and beam leakage corrections

We discuss the treatment of bandpass and beam leakage corrections in the Bayesian BeyondPlanck CMB analysis pipeline as applied to the Planck LFI measurements. As a preparatory step, we first apply three corrections to the nominal LFI bandpass profiles including removal of a known systematic effect in the ground measuring equipment at 61 GHz; smoothing of standing wave ripples; and edge regularization. The main net impact of these modifications is an overall shift in the 70 GHz bandpass of +0.6 GHz; we argue that any analysis of LFI data products, either from Planck or BeyondPlanck, should use these new bandpasses. In addition, we fit a single free bandpass parameter for each radiometer of the form $Δ_i = Δ_0 + δ_i$, where $Δ_0$ represents an absolute frequency shift per frequency band and $δ_i$ is a relative shift per detector. The absolute correction is only fitted at 30 GHz with a full $χ^2$-based likelihood, resulting in a correction of $Δ_{30}=0.24\pm0.03\,$GHz. The relative corrections are fitted using a spurious map approach, fundamentally similar to the method pioneered by the WMAP team, but without introducing many additional degrees of freedom. All bandpass parameters are sampled using a standard Metropolis sampler within the main BeyondPlanck Gibbs chain, and bandpass uncertainties are thus propagated to all other data products in the analysis. In total, we find that our bandpass model significantly reduces leakage effects. For beam leakage corrections, we adopt the official Planck LFI beam estimates without additional degrees of freedom, and only marginalize over the underlying sky model. We note that this is the first time leakage from beam mismatch has been included for Planck LFI maps.

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arXiv2022

BeyondPlanck III. Commander3

We describe the computational infrastructure for end-to-end Bayesian CMB analysis implemented by the BeyondPlanck collaboration. This code is called commander3, and provides a statistically consistent framework for global analysis of CMB and microwave observations, and may be useful for a wide range of legacy, current, and future experiments. The paper has three main goals. Firstly, we provide a high-level overview of the existing code base, aiming to guide readers who wish to extend and adapt the code according to their own needs, or to reimplement it from scratch in a different programming language. Secondly, we discuss some critical computational challenges that arise within any global CMB analysis framework, for instance in-memory compression of time-ordered data, FFT optimization, and parallelization and load-balancing. Thirdly, we quantify the CPU and RAM requirements for the current BeyondPlanck analysis, and find that a total of 1.5 TB of RAM is required for efficient analysis, and the total cost of a full Gibbs sample is 170 CPU-hrs, including both low-level processing and high-level component separation, which is well within the capabilities of current low-cost computing facilities. The existing code base is made publicly available under a GNU General Public Library (GPL) license.

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arXiv2022

BeyondPlanck VIII. Efficient Sidelobe Convolution and Correction through Spin Harmonics

We introduce a new formulation of the Conviqt convolution algorithm in terms of spin harmonics, and apply this to the problem of sidelobe correction for BeyondPlanck, the first end-to-end Bayesian Gibbs sampling framework for CMB analysis. We compare our implementation to the previous Planck LevelS implementation, and find good agreement between the two codes in terms of accuracy, but with a speed-up reaching a factor of 3--10, depending on the frequency bandlimits, $l_{\textrm{max}}$ and $m_{\textrm{max}}$. The new algorithm is significantly simpler to implement and maintain, since all low-level calculations are handled through an external spherical harmonic transform library. We find that our mean sidelobe estimates for Planck LFI agree well with previous efforts. Additionally, we present novel sidelobe rms maps that quantify the uncertainty in the sidelobe corrections due to variations in the sky model.

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arXiv2021

Planck 2018 results. VI. Cosmological parameters

We present cosmological parameter results from the final full-mission Planck measurements of the CMB anisotropies. We find good consistency with the standard spatially-flat 6-parameter $Λ$CDM cosmology having a power-law spectrum of adiabatic scalar perturbations (denoted "base $Λ$CDM" in this paper), from polarization, temperature, and lensing, separately and in combination. A combined analysis gives dark matter density $Ω_c h^2 = 0.120\pm 0.001$, baryon density $Ω_b h^2 = 0.0224\pm 0.0001$, scalar spectral index $n_s = 0.965\pm 0.004$, and optical depth $τ= 0.054\pm 0.007$ (in this abstract we quote $68\,\%$ confidence regions on measured parameters and $95\,\%$ on upper limits). The angular acoustic scale is measured to $0.03\,\%$ precision, with $100θ_*=1.0411\pm 0.0003$. These results are only weakly dependent on the cosmological model and remain stable, with somewhat increased errors, in many commonly considered extensions. Assuming the base-$Λ$CDM cosmology, the inferred late-Universe parameters are: Hubble constant $H_0 = (67.4\pm 0.5)$km/s/Mpc; matter density parameter $Ω_m = 0.315\pm 0.007$; and matter fluctuation amplitude $σ_8 = 0.811\pm 0.006$. We find no compelling evidence for extensions to the base-$Λ$CDM model. Combining with BAO we constrain the effective extra relativistic degrees of freedom to be $N_{\rm eff} = 2.99\pm 0.17$, and the neutrino mass is tightly constrained to $\sum m_ν< 0.12$eV. The CMB spectra continue to prefer higher lensing amplitudes than predicted in base -$Λ$CDM at over $2\,σ$, which pulls some parameters that affect the lensing amplitude away from the base-$Λ$CDM model; however, this is not supported by the lensing reconstruction or (in models that also change the background geometry) BAO data. (Abridged)

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arXiv2021

The XFaster Power Spectrum and Likelihood Estimator for the Analysis of Cosmic Microwave Background Maps

We present the XFaster analysis package. XFaster is a fast, iterative angular power spectrum estimator based on a diagonal approximation to the quadratic Fisher matrix estimator. XFaster uses Monte Carlo simulations to compute noise biases and filter transfer functions and is thus a hybrid of both Monte Carlo and quadratic estimator methods. In contrast to conventional pseudo-$C_\ell$ based methods, the algorithm described here requires a minimal number of simulations, and does not require them to be precisely representative of the data to estimate accurate covariance matrices for the bandpowers. The formalism works with polarization-sensitive observations and also data sets with identical, partially overlapping, or independent survey regions. The method was first implemented for the analysis of BOOMERanG data, and also used as part of the Planck analysis. Here, we describe the full, publicly available analysis package, written in Python, as developed for the analysis of data from the 2015 flight of the SPIDER instrument. The package includes extensions for self-consistently estimating null spectra and for estimating fits for Galactic foreground contributions. We show results from the extensive validation of XFaster using simulations, and its application to the SPIDER data set.

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arXiv2021

A Constraint on Primordial $B$-Modes from the First Flight of the SPIDER Balloon-Borne Telescope

We present the first linear polarization measurements from the 2015 long-duration balloon flight of SPIDER, an experiment designed to map the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on degree angular scales. Results from these measurements include maps and angular power spectra from observations of 4.8% of the sky at 95 and 150 GHz, along with the results of internal consistency tests on these data. While the polarized CMB anisotropy from primordial density perturbations is the dominant signal in this region of sky, Galactic dust emission is also detected with high significance; Galactic synchrotron emission is found to be negligible in the SPIDER bands. We employ two independent foreground-removal techniques in order to explore the sensitivity of the cosmological result to the assumptions made by each. The primary method uses a dust template derived from Planck data to subtract the Galactic dust signal. A second approach, employing a joint analysis of SPIDER and Planck data in the harmonic domain, assumes a modified-blackbody model for the spectral energy distribution of the dust with no constraint on its spatial morphology. Using a likelihood that jointly samples the template amplitude and $r$ parameter space, we derive 95% upper limits on the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio from Feldman-Cousins and Bayesian constructions, finding $r<0.11$ and $r<0.19$, respectively. Roughly half the uncertainty in $r$ derives from noise associated with the template subtraction. New data at 280 GHz from SPIDER's second flight will complement the Planck polarization maps, providing powerful measurements of the polarized Galactic dust emission.

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arXiv2021

Constraints on the spectral index of polarized synchrotron emission from WMAP and Faraday-corrected S-PASS data

We constrain the spectral index of polarized synchrotron emission, $β_s$, by correlating the recently released 2.3 GHz S-Band Polarization All Sky Survey (S-PASS) data with the 23 GHz 9-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) sky maps. We subdivide the S-PASS field, which covers the southern ecliptic hemisphere, into 95 $15^{\circ}\times15^{\circ}$ regions and estimate the spectral index of polarized synchrotron emission within each region using a simple but robust T-T plot technique. Three different versions of the S-PASS data are considered, corresponding to: no correction for Faraday rotation; Faraday correction based on the rotation measure model presented by the S-PASS team; or Faraday correction based on a rotation measure model presented by Hutschenreuter and Enßlin. We find that the correlation between S-PASS and WMAP is strongest when applying the S-PASS model. Adopting this correction model, we find that the mean spectral index of polarized synchrotron emission gradually steepens from $β_s\approx-2.8$ at low Galactic latitudes to $β_s\approx-3.3$ at high Galactic latitudes, in good agreement with previously published results. Finally, we consider two special cases defined by the BICEP2 and SPIDER fields and obtain mean estimates of $β_{BICEP2}=-3.22\pm0.06$ and $β_{SPIDER}=-3.21\pm0.03$, respectively. A comparison with a similar analysis performed in the 23-33 GHz range suggests a flattening of about $Δβ_s \sim 0.1 \pm 0.2$ from low to higher frequencies, but with no statistical significance due to high uncertainties.

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arXiv2021

Overview of the Medium and High Frequency Telescopes of the LiteBIRD satellite mission

LiteBIRD is a JAXA-led Strategic Large-Class mission designed to search for the existence of the primordial gravitational waves produced during the inflationary phase of the Universe, through the measurements of their imprint onto the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). These measurements, requiring unprecedented sensitivity, will be performed over the full sky, at large angular scales, and over 15 frequency bands from 34GHz to 448GHz. The LiteBIRD instruments consist of three telescopes, namely the Low-, Medium- and High-Frequency Telescope (respectively LFT, MFT and HFT). We present in this paper an overview of the design of the Medium-Frequency Telescope (89-224GHz) and the High-Frequency Telescope (166-448GHz), the so-called MHFT, under European responsibility, which are two cryogenic refractive telescopes cooled down to 5K. They include a continuous rotating half-wave plate as the first optical element, two high-density polyethylene (HDPE) lenses and more than three thousand transition-edge sensor (TES) detectors cooled to 100mK. We provide an overview of the concept design and the remaining specific challenges that we have to face in order to achieve the scientific goals of LiteBIRD.

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arXiv2021

LiteBIRD: JAXA's new strategic L-class mission for all-sky surveys of cosmic microwave background polarization

LiteBIRD, the Lite (Light) satellite for the study of B-mode polarization and Inflation from cosmic background Radiation Detection, is a space mission for primordial cosmology and fundamental physics. JAXA selected LiteBIRD in May 2019 as a strategic large-class (L-class) mission, with its expected launch in the late 2020s using JAXA's H3 rocket. LiteBIRD plans to map the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization over the full sky with unprecedented precision. Its main scientific objective is to carry out a definitive search for the signal from cosmic inflation, either making a discovery or ruling out well-motivated inflationary models. The measurements of LiteBIRD will also provide us with an insight into the quantum nature of gravity and other new physics beyond the standard models of particle physics and cosmology. To this end, LiteBIRD will perform full-sky surveys for three years at the Sun-Earth Lagrangian point L2 for 15 frequency bands between 34 and 448 GHz with three telescopes, to achieve a total sensitivity of 2.16 micro K-arcmin with a typical angular resolution of 0.5 deg. at 100GHz. We provide an overview of the LiteBIRD project, including scientific objectives, mission requirements, top-level system requirements, operation concept, and expected scientific outcomes.

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