arXiv subjects

Tarun Souradeep

Publications and source records attributed to Tarun Souradeep.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2015

Statistical Isotropy violation of CMB polarization sky due to Lorentz boost

In the frame of a moving observer, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) fluctuation exhibits violation of Statistical Isotropy (SI). The SI violation effect from our local motion on CMB temperature fluctuation has been measured in the recent Planck results. We calculate the effect of our local motion with velocity $(β\equiv |\boldsymbol v|/c= 1.23 \times 10^{-3})$ on CMB polarization field. The Lorentz transformation of the polarization field leads to aberration in the direction of incoming photons and also modulation of the Stokes parameters, which results in mixing of power between different CMB multipoles. We show that for small values of $β$, the effect on the angular power spectra that corresponds to the diagonal terms in the spherical harmonic space is at $O(β^2)$. But non-zero off-diagonal terms at the linear order in $β$ could provide a measurable signature of SI violation in the Bipolar Spherical Harmonic (BipoSH) representation. We also calculate the measurability of $β$ from polarization maps from experiments like Planck and PRISM. It is possible to measure $β$ from the ideal, cosmic variance limited BipoSH spectra of $EE$, $TE$, $BB$, but not in $EB$ and $TB$. With the instrumental noise of and angular resolution of Planck, it is not possible to measure $β$ with high statistical significance from BipoSH spectra of polarization. PRISM can measure $β$ with high significance in both $EE$ and $TE$ BipoSH spectra, but not in $BB$, $EB$ and $TB$ BipoSH spectra.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

Revised cosmological parameters after BICEP 2 and BOSS

Estimation of parameters of the \lq standard\rq \,model of cosmology have dramatically improved over past few decades due to increasingly exquisite measurements made by Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments. Recent data from Planck matches well with the minimal $Λ$CDM model. A likelihood analysis using Planck, WMAP and a selection of high resolution experiments (highL), tensor to scalar ratio $r_{0.002}$ is found to be $<0.11$ when $dn_{s}/d\ln k = 0$. Planck also imposes an upper bound on neutrino mass $\sum m_ν<0.23\,$eV using Planck+WMAP+highL+BAO likelihood. However, recently results from BICEP 2 claims the detection of $r= 0.2^{+0.07}_{-0.05}$ from polarization spectra. Further, results from SDSS-III BOSS large scale galaxy survey constrains the total neutrino mass to $\sum m_ν=0.36 \pm 0.10$ eV. It is important to study the consequences of these new measurements on other cosmological parameters. In this paper we assess the revised constraints on cosmological parameters in light of these two measurements that are in some tension with the constraints from Planck. Using the prior on $\sum m_ν$ as measured by SDSS-III BOSS and BICEP 2 likelihood, we find that the model with running spectral index ($dn_{s}/d\ln k \neq 0$) leads to a value of $A_L>1$ at $3.1 σ$. But, the model with $dn_{s}/d\ln k =0$ makes $A_L$ consistent with $1$, at $2.1σ$ and also shows that $N_{\rm eff}$ is consistent with its theoretical value of $3.046$ at around $2σ$. Therefore, the analysis in this paper shows that the model with $dn_{s}/d\ln k =0$ gives consistency with other cosmological parameters ($N_{\rm eff}$ and $A_L$ ) when the current limits on $\sum m_ν$ and $r_{0.05}$ are considered. However, on reducing the value of $r_{0.05}$, the model with non-zero $dn_{s}/d\ln k$ gives consistent result of $A_L =1$ [abridged].

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

Estimation of Inflation parameters for Perturbed Power Law model using recent CMB measurements

Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is an important probe for understanding the inflationary era of the Universe. We consider the Perturbed Power Law (PPL) model of inflation which is a soft deviation from Power Law (PL) inflationary model. This model captures the effect of higher order derivative of Hubble parameter during inflation, which in turn leads to a non-zero effective mass $m_{\rm eff}$ for the inflaton field. The higher order derivatives of Hubble parameter at leading order sources constant difference in the spectral index for scalar and tensor perturbation going beyond PL model of inflation. PPL model have two observable independent parameters, namely spectral index for tensor perturbation $ν_t$ and change in spectral index for scalar perturbation $ν_{st}$ to explain the observed features in the scalar and tensor power spectrum of perturbation. From the recent measurements of CMB power spectra by WMAP, Planck and BICEP-2 for temperature and polarization, we estimate the feasibility of PPL model with standard $Λ$CDM model. Although BICEP-2 claimed a detection of $r=0.2$, estimates of dust contamination provided by Planck have left open the possibility that only upper bound on $r$ will be expected in a joint analysis. As a result we consider different upper bounds on the value of $r$ and show that PPL model can explain a lower value of tensor to scalar ratio ($r<0.1$ or $r<0.01$) for a scalar spectral index of $n_s=0.96$ by having a non-zero value of effective mass of the inflaton field $\frac{m^2_{\rm eff}}{H^2}$. The analysis with WP+ Planck likelihood shows a non-zero detection of $\frac{m^2_{\rm eff}}{H^2}$ with $5.7\,σ$ and $8.1\,σ$ respectively for $r<0.1$ and $r<0.01$. Whereas, with BICEP-2 likelihood $\frac{m^2_{\rm eff}}{H^2} = -0.0237 \pm 0.0135$ which is consistent with zero.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

Primordial power spectrum from Planck

Using modified Richardson-Lucy algorithm we reconstruct the primordial power spectrum (PPS) from Planck Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropy data. In our analysis we use different combinations of angular power spectra from Planck to reconstruct the shape of the primordial power spectrum and locate possible features. Performing an extensive error analysis we found the dip near $\ell\sim750-850$ represents the most prominent feature in the data. Feature near $\ell\sim1800-2000$ is detectable with high confidence only in 217 GHz spectrum and is apparently consequence of a small systematic as described in the revised Planck 2013 papers. Fixing the background cosmological parameters and the foreground nuisance parameters to their best fit baseline values, we report that the best fit power law primordial power spectrum is consistent with the reconstructed form of the PPS at 2$σ$ C.L. of the estimated errors (apart from the local features mentioned above). As a consistency test, we found the reconstructed primordial power spectrum from Planck temperature data can also substantially improve the fit to WMAP-9 angular power spectrum data (with respect to power-law form of the PPS) allowing an overall amplitude shift of $\sim2.5\%$. In this context low-$\ell$ and 100 GHz spectrum from Planck which have proper overlap in the multipole range with WMAP data found to be completely consistent with WMAP-9 (allowing amplitude shift). As another important result of our analysis we do report the evidence of gravitational lensing through the reconstruction analysis. Finally we present two smooth form of the PPS containing only the important features. These smooth forms of PPS can provide significant improvements in fitting the data (with respect to the power law PPS) and can be helpful to give hints for inflationary model building.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

Unveiling acoustic physics of the CMB using nonparametric estimation of the temperature angular power spectrum for Planck

Estimation of the angular power spectrum is one of the important steps in Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data analysis. Here, we present a nonparametric estimate of the temperature angular power spectrum for the Planck 2013 CMB data. The method implemented in this work is model-independent, and allows the data, rather than the model, to dictate the fit. Since one of the main targets of our analysis is to test the consistency of the $Λ$CDM model with Planck 2013 data, we use the nuisance parameters associated with the best-fit $Λ$CDM angular power spectrum to remove foreground contributions from the data at multipoles $\ell \geq50$. We thus obtain a combined angular power spectrum data set together with the full covariance matrix, appropriately weighted over frequency channels. Our subsequent nonparametric analysis resolves six peaks (and five dips) up to $\ell \sim1850$ in the temperature angular power spectrum. We present uncertainties in the peak/dip locations and heights at the $95\%$ confidence level. We further show how these reflect the harmonicity of acoustic peaks, and can be used for acoustic scale estimation. Based on this nonparametric formalism, we found the best-fit $Λ$CDM model to be at $36\%$ confidence distance from the center of the nonparametric confidence set -- this is considerably larger than the confidence distance ($9\%$) derived earlier from a similar analysis of the WMAP 7-year data. Another interesting result of our analysis is that at low multipoles, the Planck data do not suggest any upturn, contrary to the expectation based on the integrated Sachs-Wolfe contribution in the best-fit $Λ$CDM cosmology.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

Orthogonal BipoSH measures : Scrutinizing sources of isotropy violation

The two point correlation function of the CMB temperature anisotropies is generally assumed to be statistically isotropic (SI). Deviations from this assumption could be traced to physical or observational artefacts and systematic effects. Measurement of non-vanishing power in the BipoSH spectra is a standard statistical technique to search for isotropy violations. Although this is a neat tool allowing a blind search for SI violations in the CMB sky, it is not easy to discern the cause of isotropy violation using this measure. In this article, we propose a novel technique of constructing orthogonal BipoSH estimators, which can be used to discern between models of isotropy violation.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

SCoPE: An efficient method of Cosmological Parameter Estimation

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampler is widely used for cosmological parameter estimation from CMB and other data. However, due to the intrinsic serial nature of the MCMC sampler, convergence is often very slow. Here we present a fast and independently written Monte Carlo method for cosmological parameter estimation named as Slick Cosmological Parameter Estimator (SCoPE), that employs delayed rejection to increase the acceptance rate of a chain, and pre-fetching that helps an individual chain to run on parallel CPUs. An inter-chain covariance update is also incorporated to prevent clustering of the chains allowing faster and better mixing of the chains. We use an adaptive method for covariance calculation to calculate and update the covariance automatically as the chains progress. Our analysis shows that the acceptance probability of each step in SCoPE is more than $95\%$ and the convergence of the chains are faster. Using SCoPE, we carry out some cosmological parameter estimations with different cosmological models using WMAP-9 and Planck results. One of the current research interests in cosmology is quantifying the nature of dark energy. We analyze the cosmological parameters from two illustrative commonly used parameterisations of dark energy models. We also asses primordial helium fraction in the universe can be constrained by the present CMB data from WMAP-9 and Planck. The results from our MCMC analysis on the one hand helps us to understand the workability of the SCoPE better, on the other hand it provides a completely independent estimation of cosmological parameters from WMAP-9 and Planck data.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

Suppressing CMB low multipoles with ISW effect

Recent results of Planck data reveal that the power in the low multipoles of the CMB angular power spectrum, approximately up to $l=30$, is significantly lower than the theoretically predicted in the best fit $Λ$CDM model. In this paper we investigate the possibility of invoking the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect to explain this power deficit at low multipoles. The ISW effect that originates from the late time expansion history of the universe is rich in possibilities given the limited understanding of the origin of dark energy (DE). It is a common understanding that the ISW effect adds to the power at the low multipoles of the CMB angular power spectrum. In this paper we carry out an analytic study to show that there are some expansion histories in which the ISW effect, instead of adding power, provides negative contribution to the power at low multipoles. Guided by the analytic study, we present examples of the features required in the late time expansion history of the universe that could explain the power deficiency through the ISW effect. We also show that an ISW origin of power deficiency is consistent, at present, with other cosmological observations that probe the expansion history such as distance modulus, matter power spectrum and the evolution of cluster number count. We also show that the ISW effect may be distinguished from power deficit originating from features in the PPS using the measurements of the CMB polarization spectrum at low multipoles expected from Planck. We conclude that the power at low multipoles of the CMB anisotropy could well be closely linked to Dark Energy puzzle in cosmology and this observation could be actually pointing to richer phenomenology of DE beyond the cosmological constant $Λ$. (abbreviated)

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

ISW effect as probe of features in the expansion history of the Universe

In this paper, using and implementing a new line of sight CMB code, called CMBAns [1], that allows us to modify H(z) for any given feature at any redshift we study the effect of changes in the expansion history of the Universe on the CMB power spectrum. Motivated by the detailed analytical calculations of the effects of the changes in H(z) on ISW plateau and CMB low multipoles, we study two phenomenological parametric form of the expansion history using WMAP data and through MCMC analysis. Our MCMC analysis shows that the standard LCDM cosmological model is consistent with the CMB data allowing the expansion history of the Universe vary around this model at different redshifts. However, our analysis also shows that a decaying dark energy model proposed in [2] has in fact a marginally better fit than the standard cosmological constant model to CMB data. Concordance of our studies here with the previous analysis showing that Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) and supernovae data (SN Ia) also prefer mildly this decaying dark energy model to LCDM, makes this finding interesting and worth further investigation.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

A comparison of CMB lensing efficiency of gravitational waves and large scale structure

We provide a detailed treatment and comparison of the weak lensing effects due to large-scale structure (LSS), or scalar density perturbations and those due to gravitational waves(GW) or tensor perturbations, on the temperature and polarization power spectra of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). We carry out the analysis both in real space by using the correlation function method, as well as in the spherical harmonic space. We find an intriguing similarity between the lensing kernels associated with LSS lensing and GW lensing. It is found that the lensing kernels only differ in relative negative signs and their form is very reminiscent of even and odd parity bipolar spherical harmonic coefficients. Through a numerical study of these lensing kernels, we establish that lensing due to GW is more efficient at distorting the CMB spectra as compared to LSS lensing, particularly for the polarization power spectra. Finally we argue that the CMB B-mode power spectra measurements can be used to place interesting constraints on GW energy densities.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

A New Window into Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background

A stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) would gravitationally lens the cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons. We find that the lensing due to gravitational waves(GW) is more efficient as compared to lensing due to scalar density perturbations. Though the effect of lensing due to GW is found to effect all the four CMB power spectra, its effect is most prominently seen in the CMB polarization power spectra. This suggests that the measurements of the CMB angular power spectra could be used to constraining the energy density ($Ω_{GW}$) of the SGBW. In our analysis we find that the most stringent constraints on $Ω_{GW}$ are due to measurements of the angular power spectra of CMB temperature anisotropies. We show that in the future it will be possible to place more stringent bounds on $Ω_{GW}$ using improved upper limits or detections of the angular power spectra of the B-modes of CMB polarization at large multipoles.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

CMB polarization TE power spectrum estimation with non-circular beam

Precise measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy have been one of the foremost concerns in modern cosmology as it provides valuable information on the cosmology of the universe. However, an accurate estimation of the CMB power spectrum faces many challenges as the CMB experiments sensitivity increases. Furthermore, for polarization experiments the precision of measurement is complicated by the fact that the polarisation signal is very faint compared to the measured total intensity, and could be impossible to detect in the presence of high level of systematics. One of the most important source of errors in CMB polarization experiment is the beam asymmetry. For large data set the estimation of the CMB polarization power spectrum with standard optimal Maximum Likelihood (ML) is prohibitive for high resolution CMB experiments due to the enormous required computation time. In this paper, we present a semi-analytical framework using the pseudo-$C_{l}$ estimator to compute the power spectrum TE of the temperature anisotropy and the E-component of the polarization radiation field using non-circular beams. We adopt a model of beams obtained from a perturbative expansion of the beam around a circular (axisymmetric) one in harmonic space, and compute the resulting bias matrix which relates the true power spectrum with the observed one using an efficient algorithm for rapid computation. We show that for a multipole up to $l_{max}=500$, the bias matrix can be computed in less than one second with a single CPU processor at 2.53 GHz. We find that the uncertainties induced by the beam asymmetry in the polarization power spectrum at the peak of the bias matrix for WMAP and Planck experiments can be as large as a few 10 to 20% (upper limit for Planck LFI 30 GHz)

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

Primordial power spectrum: a complete analysis with the WMAP nine-year data

We have improved further the error sensitive Richardson-Lucy deconvolution algorithm making it applicable directly on the un-binned measured angular power spectrum of Cosmic Microwave Background observations to reconstruct the form of the primordial power spectrum. This improvement makes the application of the method significantly more straight forward by removing some intermediate stages of analysis allowing a reconstruction of the primordial spectrum with higher efficiency and precision and with lower computational expenses. Applying the modified algorithm we fit the WMAP 9 year data using the optimized reconstructed form of the primordial spectrum with more than 300 improvement in χ^2 with respect to the best fit power-law. This is clearly beyond the reach of other alternative approaches and reflects the efficiency of the proposed method in the reconstruction process and allow us to look for any possible feature in the primordial spectrum projected in the CMB data. Though the proposed method allow us to look at various possibilities for the form of the primordial spectrum, all having good fit to the data, proper error-analysis is needed to test for consistency of theoretical models since, along with possible physical artefacts, most of the features in the reconstructed spectrum might be arising from fitting noises in the CMB data. Reconstructed error-band for the form of the primordial spectrum using many realizations of the data, all bootstrapped and based on WMAP 9 year data, shows proper consistency of power-law form of the primordial spectrum with the WMAP 9 data at all wave numbers. Including WMAP polarization data in to the analysis have not improved much our results due to its low quality but we expect Planck data will allow us to make a full analysis on CMB observations on both temperature and polarization separately and in combination.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

Cosmological parameter estimation with free-form primordial power spectrum

Constraints on the main cosmological parameters using CMB or large scale structure data are usually based on power-law assumption of the primordial power spectrum (PPS). However, in the absence of a preferred model for the early universe, this raises a concern that current cosmological parameter estimates are strongly prejudiced by the assumed power-law form of PPS. In this paper, for the first time, we perform cosmological parameter estimation allowing the free form of the primordial spectrum. This is in fact the most general approach to estimate cosmological parameters without assuming any particular form for the primordial spectrum. We use direct reconstruction of the PPS for any point in the cosmological parameter space using recently modified Richardson-Lucy algorithm however other alternative reconstruction methods could be used for this purpose as well. We use WMAP 9 year data in our analysis considering CMB lensing effect and we report, for the first time, that the flat spatial universe with no cosmological constant is ruled out by more than 4σconfidence limit without assuming any particular form of the primordial spectrum. This would be probably the most robust indication for dark energy using CMB data alone. Our results on the estimated cosmological parameters show that higher values of baryonic and matter density and lower value of Hubble parameter (in comparison to the estimated values by assuming power-law PPS) is preferred by the data. However, the estimated cosmological parameters by assuming free form of the PPS have overlap at 1σconfidence level with the estimated values assuming power-law form of PPS.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

Revealing Non-circular beam effect in WMAP-7 CMB maps with BipoSH measures of Statistical Isotropy

Mild, unavoidable deviations from circular-symmetry of instrumental beams in current Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments now pose a significant challenge to deriving high precision inferences from the high sensitivity and resolution of CMB measurements. We present analytic results, verified by numerical simulations, that CMB maps of cosmological signal that respect underlying statistical isotropy (SI) symmetry, measured with an instrument that has mildly non-circular (NC) beam would, nevertheless, exhibit SI violation. Further, we show that appropriate observable measures constructed within the Bipolar spherical harmonic (BipoSH) representation of SI violation capture subtle NC-beam effects coupled with the scan strategy of the instrument. Accompanying their latest 7-year data release, the WMAP team published very high significance measurements of non-zero BipoSH spectra, A^{20}_{l l} and A^{20}_{l-2 l}, in the "W" and "V" band of the experiment. We present a strong case that the BipoSH measurement are primarily explained by the quadrupolar (m=2) component of the NC-beams, b_{l2}, of the respective channels. The fact that subtle levels of non-circularity, e.g., WMAP beams |b_{l2}|/b_{l0} < 0.01, lead to measurable BipoSH spectra points to the immense promise and potential of the BipoSH representation. The key result of this work is that using BipoSH measurements it is possible to estimate an equivalent single hit,'parallel transported' effective NC-beam that matches both the angular power spectrum and the non-zero BipoSH measurements of the observed maps. Hence, BipoSH analysis provides a very simple and effective characterization of CMB maps made with NC-beam. (Abridged)

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

Nonparametric Forecasts of the CMB Angular Power Spectra for the Planck Mission

The Planck mission, designed for making measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation with unprecedented accuracy and angular resolution, is expected to release its first data set in the near future. For the first time in the CMB history, extensive measurements of the CMB polarization will be made available for the entire sky. Such precise and rich data are expected to contain a great wealth of information about the Universe. The information in the CMB data is conveniently represented in terms of angular power spectra for temperature and polarization. A proper estimation of these CMB power spectra from data is the first step in making inferences about the Universe and, in particular, cosmological parameters that govern the Universe. In this paper, we provide forecasts for the $TT$, $EE$, and $TE$ angular power spectra for the Planck mission. Our forecasts are made using synthetic data based on the best-fit $Λ$CDM model while conforming to the characteristics and parameters of the Planck mission. We have analysed such synthetic data sets using a nonparametric function estimation formalism that is otherwise asymptotically model-independent. Indeed, the power spectra estimated from such synthetic data turn out to be sufficiently close to the corresponding $Λ$CDM spectra. Our analysis further indicates that the three angular power spectra are determined sufficiently well for $2 \le l \lesssim l_{max}$, where $l_{max} = 2500 {($TT$),} 1377 {($EE$), and} 1727 {($TE$)}$ respectively. A signature of reionization is evident in the $EE$ and $TE$ power spectra in the form of a bump at low $l$s ...

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

From Nonparametric Power Spectra to Inference About Cosmological Parameters: A Random Walk in the Cosmological Parameter Space

What do the data, as distinguished from cosmological models, tell us about cosmological parameters that determined the model of the universe? In this paper, we address this question in the context of the WMAP angular power spectra for the cosmic microwave background radiation. Nonparametric methods are ideally suited for this purpose because they are model-independent by construction, and therefore allow inferences that are as data-driven as possible. Our analysis is based on a nonparametric fit to the WMAP 7-year power spectrum data, with uncertainties characterized in the form of a high-dimensional confidence set centered at this fit. For the purpose of making inferences about cosmological parameters, we have devised a sampling method to explore the projection of this confidence set around the nonparametric fit, into the space of seven cosmological parameters Omega_b, Omega_c, Omega_Lambda, Omega_k, H_0, n_s, tau). Our sampling method is justified by its computational simplicity, and validated by the fact that well-known degeneracies in this cosmological parameter space are correctly reproduced in our results. Our results show that cosmological parameters are not as tightly constrained by these data alone. However, incorporating additional prior information in the analysis (e.g., constraining the values of H_0 or Omega_k) leads to tighter confidence intervals on parameters that are consistent with uncertainties estimated by the mainstream parametric methods.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Oscillations in the inflaton potential: Complete numerical treatment and comparison with the recent and forthcoming CMB datasets

Amongst the multitude of inflationary models currently available, models that lead to features in the primordial scalar spectrum are drawing increasing attention, since certain features have been found to provide a better fit to the CMB data than the conventional, nearly scale invariant, primordial spectrum. In this work, we carry out a complete numerical analysis of two models that lead to oscillations over all scales in the scalar power spectrum. We consider the model described by a quadratic potential which is superposed by a sinusoidal modulation and the recently popular axion monodromy model. Since the oscillations continue even on to arc minute scales, in addition to the WMAP data, we also compare the models with the small scale data from ACT. Though, both the models, broadly, result in oscillations in the spectrum, interestingly, we find that, while the monodromy model leads to a considerably better fit to the data in comparison to the standard power law spectrum, the quadratic potential superposed with a sinusoidal modulation does not improve the fit to a similar extent. We also carry out forecasting of the parameters using simulated Planck data for both the models. We show that the Planck mock data performs better in constraining the model parameters as compared to the presently available CMB datasets.

astro-ph.CO↗