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M. Millea

Publications and source records attributed to M. Millea.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

Performance and characterization of the SPT-3G digital frequency-domain multiplexed readout system using an improved noise and crosstalk model

The third generation South Pole Telescope camera (SPT-3G) improves upon its predecessor (SPTpol) by an order of magnitude increase in detectors on the focal plane. The technology used to read out and control these detectors, digital frequency-domain multiplexing (DfMUX), is conceptually the same as used for SPTpol, but extended to accommodate more detectors. A nearly 5x expansion in the readout operating bandwidth has enabled the use of this large focal plane, and SPT-3G performance meets the forecasting targets relevant to its science objectives. However, the electrical dynamics of the higher-bandwidth readout differ from predictions based on models of the SPTpol system due to the higher frequencies used, and parasitic impedances associated with new cryogenic electronic architecture. To address this, we present an updated derivation for electrical crosstalk in higher-bandwidth DfMUX systems, and identify two previously uncharacterized contributions to readout noise, which become dominant at high bias frequency. The updated crosstalk and noise models successfully describe the measured crosstalk and readout noise performance of SPT-3G. These results also suggest specific changes to warm electronics component values, wire-harness properties, and SQUID parameters, to improve the readout system for future experiments using DfMUX, such as the LiteBIRD space telescope.

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CMB/kSZ and Compton-$y$ Maps from 2500 square degrees of SPT-SZ and Planck Survey Data

We present component-separated maps of the primary cosmic microwave background/kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) amplitude and the thermal SZ Compton-$y$ parameter, created using data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and the Planck satellite. These maps, which cover the $\sim$2500 square degrees of the Southern sky imaged by the SPT-SZ survey, represent a significant improvement over previous such products available in this region by virtue of their higher angular resolution (1.25 arcminutes for our highest resolution Compton-$y$ maps) and lower noise at small angular scales. In this work we detail the construction of these maps using linear combination techniques, including our method for limiting the correlation of our lowest-noise Compton-$y$ map products with the cosmic infrared background. We perform a range of validation tests on these data products to test our sky modeling and combination algorithms, and we find good performance in all of these tests. Recognizing the potential utility of these data products for a wide range of astrophysical and cosmological analyses, including studies of the gas properties of galaxies, groups, and clusters, we make these products publicly available at http://pole.uchicago.edu/public/data/sptsz_ymap and on the NASA/LAMBDA website.

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Detection of Galactic and Extragalactic Millimeter-Wavelength Transient Sources with SPT-3G

High-angular-resolution cosmic microwave background experiments provide a unique opportunity to conduct a survey of time-variable sources at millimeter wavelengths, a population which has primarily been understood through follow-up measurements of detections in other bands. Here we report the first results of an astronomical transient survey with the South Pole Telescope (SPT) using the SPT-3G camera to observe 1500 square degrees of the southern sky. The observations took place from March to November 2020 in three bands centered at 95, 150, and 220 GHz. This survey yielded the detection of fifteen transient events from sources not previously detected by the SPT. The majority are associated with variable stars of different types, expanding the number of such detected flares by more than a factor of two. The stellar flares are unpolarized and bright, in some cases exceeding 1 Jy, and have durations from a few minutes to several hours. Another population of detected events last for 2--3 weeks and appear to be extragalactic in origin. Though data availability at other wavelengths is limited, we find evidence for concurrent optical activity for two of the stellar flares. Future data from SPT-3G and forthcoming instruments will provide real-time detection of millimeter-wave transients on timescales of minutes to months.

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Constraints on $Λ$CDM Extensions from the SPT-3G 2018 $EE$ and $TE$ Power Spectra

We present constraints on extensions to the $Λ$CDM cosmological model from measurements of the $E$-mode polarization auto-power spectrum and the temperature-$E$-mode cross-power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) made using 2018 SPT-3G data. The extensions considered vary the primordial helium abundance, the effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom, the sum of neutrino masses, the relativistic energy density and mass of a sterile neutrino, and the mean spatial curvature. We do not find clear evidence for any of these extensions, from either the SPT-3G 2018 dataset alone or in combination with baryon acoustic oscillation and \textit{Planck} data. None of these model extensions significantly relax the tension between Hubble-constant, $H_0$, constraints from the CMB and from distance-ladder measurements using Cepheids and supernovae. The addition of the SPT-3G 2018 data to \textit{Planck} reduces the square-root of the determinants of the parameter covariance matrices by factors of $1.3 - 2.0$ across these models, signaling a substantial reduction in the allowed parameter volume. We also explore CMB-based constraints on $H_0$ from combined SPT, \textit{Planck}, and ACT DR4 datasets. While individual experiments see some indications of different $H_0$ values between the $TT$, $TE$, and $EE$ spectra, the combined $H_0$ constraints are consistent between the three spectra. For the full combined datasets, we report $H_0 = 67.49 \pm 0.53\,\mathrm{km\,s^{-1}\,Mpc^{-1}}$, which is the tightest constraint on $H_0$ from CMB power spectra to date and in $4.1\,σ$ tension with the most precise distance-ladder-based measurement of $H_0$. The SPT-3G survey is planned to continue through at least 2023, with existing maps of combined 2019 and 2020 data already having $\sim3.5\times$ lower noise than the maps used in this analysis.

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A Demonstration of Improved Constraints on Primordial Gravitational Waves with Delensing

We present a constraint on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r$, derived from measurements of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization $B$-modes with "delensing," whereby the uncertainty on $r$ contributed by the sample variance of the gravitational lensing $B$-modes is reduced by cross-correlating against a lensing $B$-mode template. This template is constructed by combining an estimate of the polarized CMB with a tracer of the projected large-scale structure. The large-scale-structure tracer used is a map of the cosmic infrared background derived from Planck satellite data, while the polarized CMB map comes from a combination of South Pole Telescope, BICEP/Keck, and Planck data. We expand the BICEP/Keck likelihood analysis framework to accept a lensing template and apply it to the BICEP/Keck data set collected through 2014 using the same parametric foreground modelling as in the previous analysis. From simulations, we find that the uncertainty on $r$ is reduced by $\sim10\%$, from $σ(r)$= 0.024 to 0.022, which can be compared with a $\sim26\%$ reduction obtained when using a perfect lensing template. Applying the technique to the real data, the constraint on $r$ is improved from $r_{0.05} < 0.090$ to $r_{0.05} < 0.082$ (95\% C.L.). This is the first demonstration of improvement in an $r$ constraint through delensing.

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Measurements of the E-Mode Polarization and Temperature-E-Mode Correlation of the CMB from SPT-3G 2018 Data

We present measurements of the $E$-mode ($EE$) polarization power spectrum and temperature-$E$-mode ($TE$) cross-power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background using data collected by SPT-3G, the latest instrument installed on the South Pole Telescope. This analysis uses observations of a 1500 deg$^2$ region at 95, 150, and 220 GHz taken over a four month period in 2018. We report binned values of the $EE$ and $TE$ power spectra over the angular multipole range $300 \le \ell < 3000$, using the multifrequency data to construct six semi-independent estimates of each power spectrum and their minimum-variance combination. These measurements improve upon the previous results of SPTpol across the multipole ranges $300 \le \ell \le 1400$ for $EE$ and $300 \le \ell \le 1700$ for $TE$, resulting in constraints on cosmological parameters comparable to those from other current leading ground-based experiments. We find that the SPT-3G dataset is well-fit by a $Λ$CDM cosmological model with parameter constraints consistent with those from Planck and SPTpol data. From SPT-3G data alone, we find $H_0 = 68.8 \pm 1.5 \mathrm{km\,s^{-1}\,Mpc^{-1}}$ and $σ_8 = 0.789 \pm 0.016$, with a gravitational lensing amplitude consistent with the $Λ$CDM prediction ($A_L = 0.98 \pm 0.12$). We combine the SPT-3G and the Planck datasets and obtain joint constraints on the $Λ$CDM model. The volume of the 68% confidence region in six-dimensional $Λ$CDM parameter space is reduced by a factor of 1.5 compared to Planck-only constraints, with only slight shifts in central values. We note that the results presented here are obtained from data collected during just half of a typical observing season with only part of the focal plane operable, and that the active detector count has since nearly doubled for observations made with SPT-3G after 2018.

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Optimal CMB Lensing Reconstruction and Parameter Estimation with SPTpol Data

We perform the first simultaneous Bayesian parameter inference and optimal reconstruction of the gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), using 100 deg$^2$ of polarization observations from the SPTpol receiver on the South Pole Telescope. These data reach noise levels as low as 5.8 $μ$K-arcmin in polarization, which are low enough that the typically used quadratic estimator (QE) technique for analyzing CMB lensing is significantly sub-optimal. Conversely, the Bayesian procedure extracts all lensing information from the data and is optimal at any noise level. We infer the amplitude of the gravitational lensing potential to be $A_ϕ\,{=}\,0.949\,{\pm}\,0.122$ using the Bayesian pipeline, consistent with our QE pipeline result, but with 17\% smaller error bars. The Bayesian analysis also provides a simple way to account for systematic uncertainties, performing a similar job as frequentist "bias hardening," and reducing the systematic uncertainty on $A_ϕ$ due to polarization calibration from almost half of the statistical error to effectively zero. Finally, we jointly constrain $A_ϕ$ along with $A_{\rm L}$, the amplitude of lensing-like effects on the CMB power spectra, demonstrating that the Bayesian method can be used to easily infer parameters both from an optimal lensing reconstruction and from the delensed CMB, while exactly accounting for the correlation between the two. These results demonstrate the feasibility of the Bayesian approach on real data, and pave the way for future analysis of deep CMB polarization measurements with SPT-3G, Simons Observatory, and CMB-S4, where improvements relative to the QE can reach 1.5 times tighter constraints on $A_ϕ$ and 7 times lower effective lensing reconstruction noise.

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Searching for Anisotropic Cosmic Birefringence with Polarization Data from SPTpol

We present a search for anisotropic cosmic birefringence in 500 deg$^2$ of southern sky observed at 150 GHz with the SPTpol camera on the South Pole Telescope. We reconstruct a map of cosmic polarization rotation anisotropies using higher-order correlations between the observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) $E$ and $B$ fields. We then measure the angular power spectrum of this map, which is found to be consistent with zero. The non-detection is translated into an upper limit on the amplitude of the scale-invariant cosmic rotation power spectrum, $L(L+1)C_L^{αα}/2π< 0.10 \times 10^{-4}$ rad$^2$ (0.033 deg$^2$, 95% C.L.). This upper limit can be used to place constraints on the strength of primordial magnetic fields, $B_{1 \rm Mpc} < 17 {\rm nG} $ (95% C.L.), and on the coupling constant of the Chern-Simons electromagnetic term $g_{aγ} < 4.0 \times 10^{-2}/H_I $ (95% C.L.), where $H_I$ is the inflationary Hubble scale. For the first time, we also cross-correlate the CMB temperature fluctuations with the reconstructed rotation angle map, a signal expected to be non-vanishing in certain theoretical scenarios, and find no detectable signal. We perform a suite of systematics and consistency checks and find no evidence for contamination.

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An Improved Measurement of the Secondary Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies from the SPT-SZ + SPTpol Surveys

We report new measurements of millimeter-wave power spectra in the angular multipole range $2000 \le \ell \le 11,000$ (angular scales $5^\prime \gtrsim θ\gtrsim 1^\prime$). By adding 95 and 150\,GHz data from the low-noise 500 deg$^2$ SPTpol survey to the SPT-SZ three-frequency 2540 deg$^2$ survey, we substantially reduce the uncertainties in these bands. These power spectra include contributions from the primary cosmic microwave background, cosmic infrared background, radio galaxies, and thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effects. The data favor a thermal SZ (tSZ) power at 143\,GHz of $D^{\rm tSZ}_{3000} = 3.42 \pm 0.54~ μ{\rm K}^2$ and a kinematic SZ (kSZ) power of $D^{\rm kSZ}_{3000} = 3.0 \pm 1.0~ μ{\rm K}^2$. This is the first measurement of kSZ power at $\ge 3\,σ$. We study the implications of the measured kSZ power for the epoch of reionization, finding the duration of reionization to be $Δz_{re} = 1.0^{+1.6}_{-0.7}$ ($Δz_{re}< 4.1$ at 95% confidence), when combined with our previously published tSZ bispectrum measurement.

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Constraints on Cosmological Parameters from the 500 deg$^2$ SPTpol Lensing Power Spectrum

We present cosmological constraints based on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing potential power spectrum measurement from the recent 500 deg$^2$ SPTpol survey, the most precise CMB lensing measurement from the ground to date. We fit a flat $Λ$CDM model to the reconstructed lensing power spectrum alone and in addition with other data sets: baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) as well as primary CMB spectra from Planck and SPTpol. The cosmological constraints based on SPTpol and Planck lensing band powers are in good agreement when analysed alone and in combination with Planck full-sky primary CMB data. With weak priors on the baryon density and other parameters, the CMB lensing data alone provide a 4\% constraint on $σ_8Ω_m^{0.25} = 0.0593 \pm 0.025$.. Jointly fitting with BAO data, we find $σ_8=0.779 \pm 0.023$, $Ω_m = 0.368^{+0.032}_{-0.037}$, and $H_0 = 72.0^{+2.1}_{-2.5}\,\text{km}\,\text{s}^{-1}\,\text{Mpc}^{-1} $, up to $2\,σ$ away from the central values preferred by Planck lensing + BAO. However, we recover good agreement between SPTpol and Planck when restricting the analysis to similar scales. We also consider single-parameter extensions to the flat $Λ$CDM model. The SPTpol lensing spectrum constrains the spatial curvature to be $Ω_K = -0.0007 \pm 0.0025$ and the sum of the neutrino masses to be $\sum m_ν < 0.23$ eV at 95\% C.L. (with Planck primary CMB and BAO data), in good agreement with the Planck lensing results. With the differences in the $S/N$ of the lensing modes and the angular scales covered in the lensing spectra, this analysis represents an important independent check on the full-sky Planck lensing measurement.

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Fractional Polarisation of Extragalactic Sources in the 500-square-degree SPTpol Survey

We study the polarisation properties of extragalactic sources at 95 and 150 GHz in the SPTpol 500 deg$^2$ survey. We estimate the polarised power by stacking maps at known source positions, and correct for noise bias by subtracting the mean polarised power at random positions in the maps. We show that the method is unbiased using a set of simulated maps with similar noise properties to the real SPTpol maps. We find a flux-weighted mean-squared polarisation fraction $\langle p^2 \rangle= [8.9\pm1.1] \times 10^{-4}$ at 95 GHz and $[6.9\pm1.1] \times 10^{-4}$ at 150~GHz for the full sample. This is consistent with the values obtained for a sub-sample of active galactic nuclei. For dusty sources, we find 95 per cent upper limits of $\langle p^2 \rangle_{\rm 95}<16.9 \times 10^{-3}$ and $\langle p^2 \rangle_{\rm 150}<2.6 \times 10^{-3}$. We find no evidence that the polarisation fraction depends on the source flux or observing frequency. The 1-$σ$ upper limit on measured mean squared polarisation fraction at 150 GHz implies that extragalactic foregrounds will be subdominant to the CMB E and B mode polarisation power spectra out to at least $\ell\lesssim5700$ ($\ell\lesssim4700$) and $\ell\lesssim5300$ ($\ell\lesssim3600$), respectively at 95 (150) GHz.

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A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Lensing Potential and Power Spectrum from 500 deg$^2$ of SPTpol Temperature and Polarization Data

We present a measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing potential using 500 deg$^2$ of 150 GHz data from the SPTpol receiver on the South Pole Telescope. The lensing potential is reconstructed with signal-to-noise per mode greater than unity at lensing multipoles $L \lesssim 250$, using a quadratic estimator on a combination of CMB temperature and polarization maps. We report measurements of the lensing potential power spectrum in the multipole range of $100< L < 2000$ from sets of temperature-only, polarization-only, and minimum-variance estimators. We measure the lensing amplitude by taking the ratio of the measured spectrum to the expected spectrum from the best-fit $Λ$CDM model to the $\textit{Planck}$ 2015 TT+lowP+lensing dataset. For the minimum-variance estimator, we find $A_{\rm{MV}} = 0.944 \pm 0.058{\rm (Stat.)}\pm0.025{\rm (Sys.)}$; restricting to only polarization data, we find $A_{\rm{POL}} = 0.906 \pm 0.090 {\rm (Stat.)} \pm 0.040 {\rm (Sys.)}$. Considering statistical uncertainties alone, this is the most precise polarization-only lensing amplitude constraint to date (10.1 $σ$), and is more precise than our temperature-only constraint. We perform null tests and consistency checks and find no evidence for significant contamination.

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Consistency of cosmic microwave background temperature measurements in three frequency bands in the 2500-square-degree SPT-SZ survey

We present an internal consistency test of South Pole Telescope (SPT) measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropy using three-band data from the SPT-SZ survey. These measurements are made from observations of ~2500 deg^2 of sky in three frequency bands centered at 95, 150, and 220 GHz. We combine the information from these three bands into six semi-independent estimates of the CMB power spectrum (three single-frequency power spectra and three cross-frequency spectra) over the multipole range 650 < l < 3000. We subtract an estimate of foreground power from each power spectrum and evaluate the consistency among the resulting CMB-only spectra. We determine that the six foreground-cleaned power spectra are consistent with the null hypothesis, in which the six cleaned spectra contain only CMB power and noise. A fit of the data to this model results in a chi-squared value of 236.3 for 235 degrees of freedom, and the probability to exceed this chi-squared value is 46%.

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Measurements of the Cross Spectra of the Cosmic Infrared and Microwave Backgrounds from 95 to 1200 GHz

We present measurements of the power spectra of cosmic infrared background (CIB) and cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations in six frequency bands. Maps at the lower three frequency bands, 95, 150, and 220 GHz (3330, 2000, 1360 $μ$m) are from the South Pole Telescope, while the upper three frequency bands, 600, 857, and 1200 GHz (500, 350, 250 $μ$m) are observed with Herschel/SPIRE. From these data, we produce 21 angular power spectra (six auto- and fifteen cross-frequency) spanning the multipole range $600 \le \ell \le 11,000$. Our measurements are the first to cross-correlate measurements near the peak of the CIB spectrum with maps at 95 GHz, complementing and extending the measurements from Planck Collaboration et al. (2014) at 218, 550, and 857 GHz. The observed fluctuations originate largely from clustered, infrared-emitting, dusty star-forming galaxies, the CMB, and to a lesser extent radio galaxies, active galactic nuclei, and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect.

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Maps of the Southern Millimeter-wave Sky from Combined 2500 deg$^2$ SPT-SZ and Planck Temperature Data

We present three maps of the millimeter-wave sky created by combining data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and the Planck satellite. We use data from the SPT-SZ survey, a survey of 2540 deg$^2$ of the the sky with arcminute resolution in three bands centered at 95, 150, and 220 GHz, and the full-mission Planck temperature data in the 100, 143, and 217 GHz bands. A linear combination of the SPT-SZ and Planck data is computed in spherical harmonic space, with weights derived from the noise of both instruments. This weighting scheme results in Planck data providing most of the large-angular-scale information in the combined maps, with the smaller-scale information coming from SPT-SZ data. A number of tests have been done on the maps. We find their angular power spectra to agree very well with theoretically predicted spectra and previously published results.

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A Comparison of Maps and Power Spectra Determined from South Pole Telescope and Planck Data

We study the consistency of 150 GHz data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and 143 GHz data from the Planck satellite over the patch of sky covered by the SPT-SZ survey. We first visually compare the maps and find that the residuals appear consistent with noise after accounting for differences in angular resolution and filtering. We then calculate (1) the cross-spectrum between two independent halves of SPT data, (2) the cross-spectrum between two independent halves of Planck data, and (3) the cross-spectrum between SPT and Planck data. We find the three cross-spectra are well-fit (PTE = 0.30) by the null hypothesis in which both experiments have measured the same sky map up to a single free calibration parameter---i.e., we find no evidence for systematic errors in either data set. As a by-product, we improve the precision of the SPT calibration by nearly an order of magnitude, from 2.6% to 0.3% in power. Finally, we compare all three cross-spectra to the full-sky Planck power spectrum and find marginal evidence for differences between the power spectra from the SPT-SZ footprint and the full sky. We model these differences as a power law in spherical harmonic multipole number. The best-fit value of this tilt is consistent among the three cross-spectra in the SPT-SZ footprint, implying that the source of this tilt is a sample variance fluctuation in the SPT-SZ region relative to the full sky. The consistency of cosmological parameters derived from these datasets is discussed in a companion paper.

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A Comparison of Cosmological Parameters Determined from CMB Temperature Power Spectra from the South Pole Telescope and the Planck Satellite

The Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature data are best fit with a LCDM model that is in mild tension with constraints from other cosmological probes. The South Pole Telescope (SPT) 2540 $\text{deg}^2$ SPT-SZ survey offers measurements on sub-degree angular scales (multipoles $650 \leq \ell \leq 2500$) with sufficient precision to use as an independent check of the Planck data. Here we build on the recent joint analysis of the SPT-SZ and Planck data in \citet{hou17} by comparing LCDM parameter estimates using the temperature power spectrum from both data sets in the SPT-SZ survey region. We also restrict the multipole range used in parameter fitting to focus on modes measured well by both SPT and Planck, thereby greatly reducing sample variance as a driver of parameter differences and creating a stringent test for systematic errors. We find no evidence of systematic errors from such tests. When we expand the maximum multipole of SPT data used, we see low-significance shifts in the angular scale of the sound horizon and the physical baryon and cold dark matter densities, with a resulting trend to higher Hubble constant. When we compare SPT and Planck data on the SPT-SZ sky patch to Planck full-sky data but keep the multipole range restricted, we find differences in the parameters $n_s$ and $A_se^{-2τ}$. We perform further checks, investigating instrumental effects and modeling assumptions, and we find no evidence that the effects investigated are responsible for any of the parameter shifts. Taken together, these tests reveal no evidence for systematic errors in SPT or Planck data in the overlapping sky coverage and multipole range and, at most, weak evidence for a breakdown of LCDM or systematic errors influencing either the Planck data outside the SPT-SZ survey area or the SPT data at $\ell >2000$.

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A Measurement of Gravitational Lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background by Galaxy Clusters Using Data from the South Pole Telescope

Clusters of galaxies are expected to gravitationally lens the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and thereby generate a distinct signal in the CMB on arcminute scales. Measurements of this effect can be used to constrain the masses of galaxy clusters with CMB data alone. Here we present a measurement of lensing of the CMB by galaxy clusters using data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT). We develop a maximum likelihood approach to extract the CMB cluster lensing signal and validate the method on mock data. We quantify the effects on our analysis of several potential sources of systematic error and find that they generally act to reduce the best-fit cluster mass. It is estimated that this bias to lower cluster mass is roughly $0.85σ$ in units of the statistical error bar, although this estimate should be viewed as an upper limit. We apply our maximum likelihood technique to 513 clusters selected via their SZ signatures in SPT data, and rule out the null hypothesis of no lensing at $3.1σ$. The lensing-derived mass estimate for the full cluster sample is consistent with that inferred from the SZ flux: $M_{200,\mathrm{lens}} = 0.83_{-0.37}^{+0.38}\, M_{200,\mathrm{SZ}}$ (68% C.L., statistical error only).

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