arXiv subjects

M. Farhang

Publications and source records attributed to M. Farhang.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

In-Flight Performance of Spider's 280 GHz Receivers

SPIDER is a balloon-borne instrument designed to map the cosmic microwave background at degree-angular scales in the presence of Galactic foregrounds. SPIDER has mapped a large sky area in the Southern Hemisphere using more than 2000 transition-edge sensors (TESs) during two NASA Long Duration Balloon flights above the Antarctic continent. During its first flight in January 2015, SPIDER observed in the 95 GHz and 150 GHz frequency bands, setting constraints on the B-mode signature of primordial gravitational waves. Its second flight in the 2022-2023 season added new receivers at 280 GHz, each using an array of TESs coupled to the sky through feedhorns formed from stacks of silicon wafers. These receivers are optimized to produce deep maps of polarized Galactic dust emission over a large sky area, providing a unique data set with lasting value to the field. We describe the instrument's performance during SPIDER's second flight, focusing on the performance of the 280 GHz receivers. We include details on the flight, in-band optical loading at float, and an early analysis of detector noise.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2024

Cosmology with Higher-Derivative Gravities

We introduce an ingenious approach to explore cosmological implications of higher-derivative gravity theories. The key novelty lies in the characterization of the additional massive spin-0 modes constructed from Hubble derivatives as an effective density, with the corresponding pressure uniquely determined by energy conservation, while terms with no Hubble derivatives directly alter Friedmann equations. This classification of the various high-derivative contributions to Friedmann equations develops insight about their cosmological impacts and is essential for understanding the universe's evolution across energy scales. Various examples of higher-derivative gravity theories illustrate the power of this method in efficiently solving Friedmann equations and exploring new phenomena. Using CMB and BAO data, we apply this method to assess the observational feasibility of wall-bouncing universes, as predicted by scenarios with, e.g., certain third order modifications to general relativity. These models also provide an inflationary phase without the need to introduce extra scalar fields.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2024

Observational Feasibility of 4D Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet Cosmology: Bouncing and Non-Bouncing Universes

This paper analyzes the possibility of bouncing and non-bouncing universes in the framework of four-dimensional Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet (4D-EGB) gravity, corresponding respectively to negative and positive coupling constants $λ$ of the Gauss-Bonnet term. We also use the Horndeski-type scalar-tensor theory to assess the role of a scalar charge $C$ as a geometrical contribution to the radiation in the Universe. We modify the expansion history of the universe to allow for modifications induced by the 4D-EGB gravity. Using Planck measurements of the cosmic microwave background anisotropies as well as various datasets of baryonic acoustic oscillations, we set the upper bounds $λ\le 10^{-16} \text{(km/s/Mpc)}^{-2} $ and $λ\le 10^{-30} \text{(km/s/Mpc)}^{-2} $ for the non-bouncing and bouncing scenarios. The upper limit in the latter case is mainly driven by the requirement to conservatively respect the thermal history at energy scales of the standard model of particle physics. We also find that the contribution of the geometrical radiation-like term of the model cannot exceed 10\% of the current radiation in the Universe. The possibility of an early inflationary phase produced by a single scalar field is also studied and found to be feasible in both bouncing and non-bouncing scenarios. This study shows the feasibility of a bouncing universe, even with normal matter sector, in the 4D-EGB gravity. More theoretical investigation is required to further explore possible observational predictions of the model that can distinguish between general relativity and 4D-EGB gravity.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Observational assessment of the viability of de Sitter-Gödel-de Sitter phase transition

de Sitter--Gödel--de Sitter phase transition(dGd) is a possible geometrical phase transition in the very early universe. It induces fluctuations with possibly observable traces on matter and radiation fields. Here we present a simulation based on dGd to investigate possible perturbations which could be along with the standard inflationary fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and distribution of the large-scale structure. The power spectrum of perturbations is characterized by a parameter pair, labeled here as ($p_1, p_2$). With {\it Planck} observations we find $p_1=0.008^{+0.003}_{-0.008}$ and $p_2= 0.002^{+0.001}_{-0.002}$ consistent with pure inflationary power spectrum and no hint for the dGd transition. Also, it is estimated future large-scale surveys such as Euclid and SKA can further tighten the constraints up to an order of magnitude and probe the physics of the early universe with much higher precision.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

In-flight gain monitoring of SPIDER's transition-edge sensor arrays

Experiments deploying large arrays of transition-edge sensors (TESs) often require a robust method to monitor gain variations with minimal loss of observing time. We propose a sensitive and non-intrusive method for monitoring variations in TES responsivity using small square waves applied to the TES bias. We construct an estimator for a TES's small-signal power response from its electrical response that is exact in the limit of strong electrothermal feedback. We discuss the application and validation of this method using flight data from SPIDER, a balloon-borne telescope that observes the polarization of the cosmic microwave background with more than 2000 TESs. This method may prove useful for future balloon- and space-based instruments, where observing time and ground control bandwidth are limited.

astro-ph.IM↗

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.

astro-ph.CO↗

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)

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

Planck Limits on Cosmic String Tension Using Machine Learning

We develop two parallel machine-learning pipelines to estimate the contribution of cosmic strings (CSs), conveniently encoded in their tension ($Gμ$), to the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background radiation observed by {\it Planck}. The first approach is tree-based and feeds on certain map features derived by image processing and statistical tools. The second uses convolutional neural network with the goal to explore possible non-trivial features of the CS imprints. The two pipelines are trained on {\it Planck} simulations and when applied to {\it Planck} \texttt{SMICA} map yield the $3σ$ upper bound of $Gμ\lesssim 8.6\times 10^{-7}$. We also train and apply the pipelines to make forecasts for futuristic CMB-S4-like surveys and conservatively find their minimum detectable tension to be $Gμ_{\rm min}\sim 1.9\times 10^{-7}$.

astro-ph.CO↗

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.

astro-ph.CO↗

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.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Design and pre-flight performance of SPIDER 280 GHz receivers

In this work we describe upgrades to the Spider balloon-borne telescope in preparation for its second flight, currently planned for December 2021. The Spider instrument is optimized to search for a primordial B-mode polarization signature in the cosmic microwave background at degree angular scales. During its first flight in 2015, Spider mapped ~10% of the sky at 95 and 150 GHz. The payload for the second Antarctic flight will incorporate three new 280 GHz receivers alongside three refurbished 95- and 150 GHz receivers from Spider's first flight. In this work we discuss the design and characterization of these new receivers, which employ over 1500 feedhorn-coupled transition-edge sensors. We describe pre-flight laboratory measurements of detector properties, and the optical performance of completed receivers. These receivers will map a wide area of the sky at 280 GHz, providing new information on polarized Galactic dust emission that will help to separate it from the cosmological signal.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2018

Eigen-reconstruction of Perturbations to the Primordial Tensor Power Spectrum

We explore the potential of the B-mode anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) to constrain the shape of the primordial tensor power spectrum in a model-independent way. We expand possible perturbations to the power-law primordial tensor spectrum (predicted by the simplest single-field slow-roll inflationary models) using various sets of localized and nonlocalized basis functions and construct the Fisher matrix for their amplitudes. The eigen-analysis of the Fisher matrix would then yield a hierarchy of uncorrelated perturbation patterns (called tensor eigenmodes or TeMs) which are rank-ordered according to their measurability by data. We find that the first three TeMs are expected to be constrainable within a few percent by the next generation of B-mode experiments. We discuss how the method can be iteratively used to reconstruct the observable part of any general deviation from the fiducial power spectrum.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

Cosmic String Detection with Tree-Based Machine Learning

We explore the use of random forest and gradient boosting, two powerful tree-based machine learning algorithms, for the detection of cosmic strings in maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), through their unique Gott-Kaiser-Stebbins effect on the temperature anisotropies.The information in the maps is compressed into feature vectors before being passed to the learning units. The feature vectors contain various statistical measures of processed CMB maps that boost the cosmic string detectability. Our proposed classifiers, after training, give results improved over or similar to the claimed detectability levels of the existing methods for string tension, $Gμ$. They can make $3σ$ detection of strings with $Gμ\gtrsim 2.1\times 10^{-10}$ for noise-free, $0.9'$-resolution CMB observations. The minimum detectable tension increases to $Gμ\gtrsim 3.0\times 10^{-8}$ for a more realistic, CMB S4-like (II) strategy, still a significant improvement over the previous results.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

SPIDER: CMB polarimetry from the edge of space

SPIDER is a balloon-borne instrument designed to map the polarization of the millimeter-wave sky at large angular scales. SPIDER targets the B-mode signature of primordial gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), with a focus on mapping a large sky area with high fidelity at multiple frequencies. SPIDER's first longduration balloon (LDB) flight in January 2015 deployed a total of 2400 antenna-coupled Transition Edge Sensors (TESs) at 90 GHz and 150 GHz. In this work we review the design and in-flight performance of the SPIDER instrument, with a particular focus on the measured performance of the detectors and instrument in a space-like loading and radiation environment. SPIDER's second flight in December 2018 will incorporate payload upgrades and new receivers to map the sky at 285 GHz, providing valuable information for cleaning polarized dust emission from CMB maps.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

280 GHz Focal Plane Unit Design and Characterization for the SPIDER-2 Suborbital Polarimeter

We describe the construction and characterization of the 280 GHz bolometric focal plane units (FPUs) to be deployed on the second flight of the balloon-borne SPIDER instrument. These FPUs are vital to SPIDER's primary science goal of detecting or placing an upper limit on the amplitude of the primordial gravitational wave signature in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) by constraining the B-mode contamination in the CMB from Galactic dust emission. Each 280 GHz focal plane contains a 16 x 16 grid of corrugated silicon feedhorns coupled to an array of aluminum-manganese transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers fabricated on 150 mm diameter substrates. In total, the three 280 GHz FPUs contain 1,530 polarization sensitive bolometers (765 spatial pixels) optimized for the low loading environment in flight and read out by time-division SQUID multiplexing. In this paper we describe the mechanical, thermal, and magnetic shielding architecture of the focal planes and present cryogenic measurements which characterize yield and the uniformity of several bolometer parameters. The assembled FPUs have high yields, with one array as high as 95% including defects from wiring and readout. We demonstrate high uniformity in device parameters, finding the median saturation power for each TES array to be ~3 pW at 300 mK with a less than 6% variation across each array at one standard deviation. These focal planes will be deployed alongside the 95 and 150 GHz telescopes in the SPIDER-2 instrument, slated to fly from McMurdo Station in Antarctica in December 2018.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2017

Multi-Scale Pipeline for the Search of String-Induced CMB Anisotropies

We propose a multi-scale edge-detection algorithm to search for the Gott-Kaiser-Stebbins imprints of a cosmic string (CS) network on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies. Curvelet decomposition and extended Canny algorithm are used to enhance the string detectability. Various statistical tools are then applied to quantify the deviation of CMB maps having a cosmic string contribution with respect to pure Gaussian anisotropies of inflationary origin. These statistical measures include the one-point probability density function, the weighted two-point correlation function (TPCF) of the anisotropies, the unweighted TPCF of the peaks and of the up-crossing map, as well as their cross-correlation. We use this algorithm on a hundred of simulated Nambu-Goto CMB flat sky maps, covering approximately $10\%$ of the sky, and for different string tensions $Gμ$. On noiseless sky maps with an angular resolution of $0.9'$, we show that our pipeline detects CSs with $Gμ$ as low as $Gμ\gtrsim 4.3\times 10^{-10}$. At the same resolution, but with a noise level typical to a CMB-S4 phase II experiment, the detection threshold would be to $Gμ\gtrsim 1.2 \times 10^{-7}$.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

A New Limit on CMB Circular Polarization from SPIDER

We present a new upper limit on CMB circular polarization from the 2015 flight of SPIDER, a balloon-borne telescope designed to search for $B$-mode linear polarization from cosmic inflation. Although the level of circular polarization in the CMB is predicted to be very small, experimental limits provide a valuable test of the underlying models. By exploiting the non-zero circular-to-linear polarization coupling of the HWP polarization modulators, data from SPIDER's 2015 Antarctic flight provide a constraint on Stokes $V$ at 95 and 150 GHz from $33<\ell<307$. No other limits exist over this full range of angular scales, and SPIDER improves upon the previous limit by several orders of magnitude, providing 95% C.L. constraints on $\ell (\ell+1)C_{\ell}^{VV}/(2π)$ ranging from 141 $μK ^2$ to 255 $μK ^2$ at 150 GHz for a thermal CMB spectrum. As linear CMB polarization experiments become increasingly sensitive, the techniques described in this paper can be applied to obtain even stronger constraints on circular polarization.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

Planck 2015 results. XIII. Cosmological parameters

We present results based on full-mission Planck observations of temperature and polarization anisotropies of the CMB. These data are consistent with the six-parameter inflationary LCDM cosmology. From the Planck temperature and lensing data, for this cosmology we find a Hubble constant, H0= (67.8 +/- 0.9) km/s/Mpc, a matter density parameter Omega_m = 0.308 +/- 0.012 and a scalar spectral index with n_s = 0.968 +/- 0.006. (We quote 68% errors on measured parameters and 95% limits on other parameters.) Combined with Planck temperature and lensing data, Planck LFI polarization measurements lead to a reionization optical depth of tau = 0.066 +/- 0.016. Combining Planck with other astrophysical data we find N_ eff = 3.15 +/- 0.23 for the effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom and the sum of neutrino masses is constrained to < 0.23 eV. Spatial curvature is found to be |Omega_K| < 0.005. For LCDM we find a limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio of r <0.11 consistent with the B-mode constraints from an analysis of BICEP2, Keck Array, and Planck (BKP) data. Adding the BKP data leads to a tighter constraint of r < 0.09. We find no evidence for isocurvature perturbations or cosmic defects. The equation of state of dark energy is constrained to w = -1.006 +/- 0.045. Standard big bang nucleosynthesis predictions for the Planck LCDM cosmology are in excellent agreement with observations. We investigate annihilating dark matter and deviations from standard recombination, finding no evidence for new physics. The Planck results for base LCDM are in agreement with BAO data and with the JLA SNe sample. However the amplitude of the fluctuations is found to be higher than inferred from rich cluster counts and weak gravitational lensing. Apart from these tensions, the base LCDM cosmology provides an excellent description of the Planck CMB observations and many other astrophysical data sets.

astro-ph.CO↗