Browsing by Author "Hervias-Caimapo, Carlos"

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    Atacama Cosmology Telescope: High-resolution component-separated maps across one third of the sky
    (2024) Coulton, William; Madhavacheril, Mathew S.; Duivenvoorden, Adriaan J.; Hill, J. Colin; Abril-Cabezas, Irene; Ade, Peter A. R.; Aiola, Simone; Alford, Tommy; Amiri, Mandana; Amodeo, Stefania; An, Rui; Atkins, Zachary; Austermann, Jason E.; Battaglia, Nicholas; Battistelli, Elia Stefano; Beall, James A.; Bean, Rachel; Beringue, Benjamin; Bhandarkar, Tanay; Biermann, Emily; Bolliet, Boris; Bond, J. Richard; Cai, Hongbo; Calabrese, Erminia; Calafut, Victoria; Capalbo, Valentina; Carrero, Felipe; Chesmore, Grace E.; Cho, Hsiao-Mei; Choi, Steve K.; Clark, Susan E.; Rosado, Rodrigo Cordova; Cothard, Nicholas F.; Coughlin, Kevin; Crowley, Kevin T.; Devlin, Mark J.; Dicker, Simon; Doze, Peter; Duell, Cody J.; Duff, Shannon M.; Dunkley, Jo; Dunner, Rolando; Fanfani, Valentina; Fankhanel, Max; Farren, Gerrit; Ferraro, Simone; Freundt, Rodrigo; Fuzia, Brittany; Gallardo, Patricio A.; Garrido, Xavier; Givans, Jahmour; Gluscevic, Vera; Golec, Joseph E.; Guan, Yilun; Halpern, Mark; Han, Dongwon; Hasselfield, Matthew; Healy, Erin; Henderson, Shawn; Hensley, Brandon; Hervias-Caimapo, Carlos; Hilton, Gene C.; Hilton, Matt; Hincks, Adam D.; Hlozek, Renee; Ho, Shuay-Pwu Patty; Huber, Zachary B.; Hubmayr, Johannes; Huffenberger, Kevin M.; Hughes, John P.; Irwin, Kent; Isopi, Giovanni; Jense, Hidde T.; Keller, Ben; Kim, Joshua; Knowles, Kenda; Koopman, Brian J.; Kosowsky, Arthur; Kramer, Darby; Kusiak, Aleksandra; La Posta, Adrien; Lakey, Victoria; Lee, Eunseong; Li, Zack; Li, Yaqiong; Limon, Michele; Lokken, Martine; Louis, Thibaut; Lungu, Marius; MacCrann, Niall; MacInnis, Amanda; Maldonado, Diego; Maldonado, Felipe; Mallaby-Kay, Maya; Marques, Gabriela A.; van Marrewijk, Joshiwa; McCarthy, Fiona; McMahon, Jeff; Mehta, Yogesh; Menanteau, Felipe; Moodley, Kavilan; Morris, Thomas W.; Mroczkowski, Tony; Naess, Sigurd; Namikawa, Toshiya; Nati, Federico; Newburgh, Laura; Nicola, Andrina; Niemack, Michael D.; Nolta, Michael R.; Orlowski-Scherer, John; Page, Lyman A.; Pandey, Shivam; Partridge, Bruce; Prince, Heather; Puddu, Roberto; Qu, Frank J.; Radiconi, Federico; Robertson, Naomi; Rojas, Felipe; Sakuma, Tai; Salatino, Maria; Schaan, Emmanuel; Schmitt, Benjamin L.; Sehgal, Neelima; Shaikh, Shabbir; Sherwin, Blake D.; Sierra, Carlos; Sievers, Jon; Sifon, Cristobal; Simon, Sara; Sonka, Rita; Spergel, David N.; Staggs, Suzanne T.; Storer, Emilie; Switzer, Eric R.; Tampier, Niklas; Thornton, Robert; Trac, Hy; Treu, Jesse; Tucker, Carole; Ullom, Joel; Vale, Leila R.; Van Engelen, Alexander; Van Lanen, Jeff; Vargas, Cristian; Vavagiakis, Eve M.; Wagoner, Kasey; Wang, Yuhan; Wenzl, Lukas; Wollack, Edward J.; Xu, Zhilei; Zago, Fernando; Zheng, Kaiwen
    Observations of the millimeter sky contain valuable information on a number of signals, including the blackbody cosmic microwave background (CMB), Galactic emissions, and the Compton-y distortion due to the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect. Extracting new insight into cosmological and astrophysical questions often requires combining multiwavelength observations to spectrally isolate one component. In this work, we present a new arc-minute-resolution Compton-y map, which traces out the line-of-sightintegrated electron pressure, as well as maps of the CMB in intensity and E-mode polarization, across a third of the sky (around 13; 000 deg2). We produce these through a joint analysis of data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) data release 4 and 6 at frequencies of roughly 93, 148, and 225 GHz, together with data from the Planck satellite at frequencies between 30 and 545 GHz. We present detailed verification of an internal linear combination pipeline implemented in a needlet frame that allows us to efficiently suppress Galactic contamination and account for spatial variations in the ACT instrument noise. These maps provide a significant advance, in noise levels and resolution, over the existing Planck componentseparated maps and will enable a host of science goals including studies of cluster and galaxy astrophysics, inferences of the cosmic velocity field, primordial non-Gaussianity searches, and gravitational lensing reconstruction of the CMB.
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    Impact of Galactic dust non-Gaussianity on searches for B-modes from inflation
    (2024) Abril-Cabezas, Irene; Hervias-Caimapo, Carlos; von Hausegger, Sebastian; Sherwin, Blake D.; Alonso, David
    A key challenge in the search for primordial B-modes is the presence of polarized Galactic foregrounds, especially thermal dust emission. Power-spectrum-based analysis methods generally assume the foregrounds to be Gaussian random fields when constructing a likelihood and computing the covariance matrix. In this paper, we investigate how non-Gaussianity in the dust field instead affects CMB and foreground parameter inference in the context of inflationary B-mode searches, capturing this effect via modifications to the dust power-spectrum covariance matrix. For upcoming experiments such as the Simons Observatory, we find no dependence of the tensor-to-scalar ratio uncertainty sigma(r) on the degree of dust non-Gaussianity or the nature of the dust covariance matrix. We provide an explanation of this result, noting that when frequency decorrelation is negligible, dust in mid-frequency channels is cleaned using high-frequency data in a way that is independent of the spatial statistics of dust. We show that our results hold also for non-zero levels of frequency decorrelation that are compatible with existing data. We find, however, that neglecting the impact of dust non-Gaussianity in the covariance matrix can lead to inaccuracies in goodness-of-fit metrics. Care must thus be taken when using such metrics to test B-mode spectra and models, although we show that any such problems can be mitigated by using only cleaned spectrum combinations when computing goodness-of-fit statistics.
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    The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A Measurement of the DR6 CMB Lensing Power Spectrum and Its Implications for Structure Growth
    (2024) Qu, Frank; Sherwin, Blake D.; Madhavacheril, Mathew S.; Han, Dongwon; Crowley, Kevin T.; Abril-Cabezas, Irene; Ade, Peter A. R.; Aiola, Simone; Alford, Tommy; Amiri, Mandana; Amodeo, Stefania; An, Rui; Atkins, Zachary; Austermann, Jason E.; Battaglia, Nicholas; Battistelli, Elia Stefano; Beall, James A.; Bean, Rachel; Beringue, Benjamin; Bhandarkar, Tanay; Biermann, Emily; Bolliet, Boris; Bond, J. Richard; Cai, Hongbo; Calabrese, Erminia; Calafut, Victoria; Capalbo, Valentina; Carrero, Felipe; Carron, Julien; Challinor, Anthony; Chesmore, Grace E.; Cho, Hsiao-Mei; Choi, Steve K.; Clark, Susan E.; Rosado, Rodrigo Cordova; Cothard, Nicholas F.; Coughlin, Kevin; Coulton, William; Dalal, Roohi; Darwish, Omar; Devlin, Mark J.; Dicker, Simon; Doze, Peter; Duell, Cody J.; Duff, Shannon M.; Duivenvoorden, Adriaan J.; Dunkley, Jo; Dunner, Rolando; Fanfani, Valentina; Fankhanel, Max; Farren, Gerrit; Ferraro, Simone; Freundt, Rodrigo; Fuzia, Brittany; Gallardo, Patricio A.; Garrido, Xavier; Gluscevic, Vera; Golec, Joseph E.; Guan, Yilun; Halpern, Mark; Harrison, Ian; Hasselfield, Matthew; Healy, Erin; Henderson, Shawn; Hensley, Brandon; Hervias-Caimapo, Carlos; Hill, J. Colin; Hilton, Gene C.; Hilton, Matt; Hincks, Adam D.; Hlozek, Renee; Ho, Shuay-Pwu Patty; Huber, Zachary B.; Hubmayr, Johannes; Huffenberger, Kevin M.; Hughes, John P.; Irwin, Kent; Isopi, Giovanni; Jense, Hidde T.; Keller, Ben; Kim, Joshua; Knowles, Kenda; Koopman, Brian J.; Kosowsky, Arthur; Kramer, Darby; Kusiak, Aleksandra; La Posta, Adrien; Lague, Alex; Lakey, Victoria; Lee, Eunseong; Li, Zack; Li, Yaqiong; Limon, Michele; Lokken, Martine; Louis, Thibaut; Lungu, Marius; MacCrann, Niall; MacInnis, Amanda; Maldonado, Diego; Maldonado, Felipe; Mallaby-Kay, Maya; Marques, Gabriela A.; McMahon, Jeff; Mehta, Yogesh; Menanteau, Felipe; Moodley, Kavilan; Morris, Thomas W.; Mroczkowski, Tony; Naess, Sigurd; Namikawa, Toshiya; Nati, Federico; Newburgh, Laura; Nicola, Andrina; Niemack, Michael D.; Nolta, Michael R.; Orlowski-Scherer, John; Page, Lyman A.; Pandey, Shivam; Partridge, Bruce; Prince, Heather; Puddu, Roberto; Radiconi, Federico; Robertson, Naomi; Rojas, Felipe; Sakuma, Tai; Salatino, Maria; Schaan, Emmanuel; Schmitt, Benjamin L.; Sehgal, Neelima; Shaikh, Shabbir; Sierra, Carlos; Sievers, Jon; Sifon, Cristobal; Simon, Sara; Sonka, Rita; Spergel, David N.; Staggs, Suzanne T.; Storer, Emilie; Switzer, Eric R.; Tampier, Niklas; Thornton, Robert; Trac, Hy; Treu, Jesse; Tucker, Carole; Ullom, Joel; Vale, Leila R.; Van Engelen, Alexander; Van Lanen, Jeff; van Marrewijk, Joshiwa; Vargas, Cristian; Vavagiakis, Eve M.; Wagoner, Kasey; Wang, Yuhan; Wenzl, Lukas; Wollack, Edward J.; Xu, Zhilei; Zago, Fernando; Zheng, Kaiwen
    We present new measurements of cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing over 9400 deg2 of the sky. These lensing measurements are derived from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) Data Release 6 (DR6) CMB data set, which consists of five seasons of ACT CMB temperature and polarization observations. We determine the amplitude of the CMB lensing power spectrum at 2.3% precision (43 sigma significance) using a novel pipeline that minimizes sensitivity to foregrounds and to noise properties. To ensure that our results are robust, we analyze an extensive set of null tests, consistency tests, and systematic error estimates and employ a blinded analysis framework. Our CMB lensing power spectrum measurement provides constraints on the amplitude of cosmic structure that do not depend on Planck or galaxy survey data, thus giving independent information about large-scale structure growth and potential tensions in structure measurements. The baseline spectrum is well fit by a lensing amplitude of A lens = 1.013 +/- 0.023 relative to the Planck 2018 CMB power spectra best-fit Lambda CDM model and A lens = 1.005 +/- 0.023 relative to the ACT DR4 + WMAP best-fit model. From our lensing power spectrum measurement, we derive constraints on the parameter combination S8CMBL equivalent to sigma 8 omega m/0.30.25 of S8CMBL=0.818 +/- 0.022 from ACT DR6 CMB lensing alone and S8CMBL=0.813 +/- 0.018 when combining ACT DR6 and Planck NPIPE CMB lensing power spectra. These results are in excellent agreement with Lambda CDM model constraints from Planck or ACT DR4 + WMAP CMB power spectrum measurements. Our lensing measurements from redshifts z similar to 0.5-5 are thus fully consistent with Lambda CDM structure growth predictions based on CMB anisotropies probing primarily z similar to 1100. We find no evidence for a suppression of the amplitude of cosmic structure at low redshifts.
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    The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: DR6 Gravitational Lensing Map and Cosmological Parameters
    (2024) Madhavacheril, Mathew S.; Qu, Frank J.; Sherwin, Blake D.; Maccrann, Niall; Li, Yaqiong; Abril-Cabezas, Irene; Ade, Peter A. R.; Aiola, Simone; Alford, Tommy; Amiri, Mandana; Amodeo, Stefania; An, Rui; Atkins, Zachary; Austermann, Jason E.; Battaglia, Nicholas; Battistelli, Elia Stefano; Beall, James A.; Bean, Rachel; Beringue, Benjamin; Bhandarkar, Tanay; Biermann, Emily; Bolliet, Boris; Bond, J. Richard; Cai, Hongbo; Calabrese, Erminia; Calafut, Victoria; Capalbo, Valentina; Carrero, Felipe; Challinor, Anthony; Chesmore, Grace E.; Cho, Hsiao-mei; Choi, Steve K.; Clark, Susan E.; Rosado, Rodrigo Cordova; Cothard, Nicholas F.; Coughlin, Kevin; Coulton, William; Crowley, Kevin T.; Dalal, Roohi; Darwish, Omar; Devlin, Mark J.; Dicker, Simon; Doze, Peter; Duell, Cody J.; Duff, Shannon M.; Duivenvoorden, Adriaan J.; Dunkley, Jo; Duenner, Rolando; Fanfani, Valentina; Fankhanel, Max; Farren, Gerrit; Ferraro, Simone; Freundt, Rodrigo; Fuzia, Brittany; Gallardo, Patricio A.; Garrido, Xavier; Givans, Jahmour; Gluscevic, Vera; Golec, Joseph E.; Guan, Yilun; Hall, Kirsten R.; Halpern, Mark; Han, Dongwon; Harrison, Ian; Hasselfield, Matthew; Healy, Erin; Henderson, Shawn; Hensley, Brandon; Hervias-Caimapo, Carlos; Hill, J. Colin; Hilton, Gene C.; Hilton, Matt; Hincks, Adam D.; Hlozek, Renee; Ho, Shuay-Pwu Patty; Huber, Zachary B.; Hubmayr, Johannes; Huffenberger, Kevin M.; Hughes, John P.; Irwin, Kent; Isopi, Giovanni; Jense, Hidde T.; Keller, Ben; Kim, Joshua; Knowles, Kenda; Koopman, Brian J.; Kosowsky, Arthur; Kramer, Darby; Kusiak, Aleksandra; La Posta, Adrien; Lague, Alex; Lakey, Victoria; Lee, Eunseong; Li, Zack; Limon, Michele; Lokken, Martine; Louis, Thibaut; Lungu, Marius; Macinnis, Amanda; Maldonado, Diego; Maldonado, Felipe; Mallaby-Kay, Maya; Marques, Gabriela A.; Mcmahon, Jeff; Mehta, Yogesh; Menanteau, Felipe; Moodley, Kavilan; Morris, Thomas W.; Mroczkowski, Tony; Naess, Sigurd; Namikawa, Toshiya; Nati, Federico; Newburgh, Laura; Nicola, Andrina; Niemack, Michael D.; Nolta, Michael R.; Orlowski-Scherer, John; Page, Lyman A.; Pandey, Shivam; Partridge, Bruce; Prince, Heather; Puddu, Roberto; Radiconi, Federico; Robertson, Naomi; Rojas, Felipe; Sakuma, Tai; Salatino, Maria; Schaan, Emmanuel; Schmitt, Benjamin L.; Sehgal, Neelima; Shaikh, Shabbir; Sierra, Carlos; Sievers, Jon; Sifon, Cristobal; Simon, Sara; Sonka, Rita; Spergel, David N.; Staggs, Suzanne T.; Storer, Emilie; Switzer, Eric R.; Tampier, Niklas; Thornton, Robert; Trac, Hy; Treu, Jesse; Tucker, Carole; Ullom, Joel; Vale, Leila R.; Van Engelen, Alexander; Van Lanen, Jeff; van Marrewijk, Joshiwa; Vargas, Cristian; Vavagiakis, Eve M.; Wagoner, Kasey; Wang, Yuhan; Wenzl, Lukas; Wollack, Edward J.; Xu, Zhilei; Zago, Fernando; Zheng, Kaiwen
    We present cosmological constraints from a gravitational lensing mass map covering 9400 sq. deg(2). reconstructed from CMB measurements made by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) from 2017 to 2021. In combination with BAO measurements (from SDSS and 6dF), we obtain the amplitude of matter fluctuations sigma(8)=0.819 +/- 0.015 at 1.8% precision, S-8 equivalent to sigma(8)(Omega(m)/0.3)(0.5)=0.840 +/- 0.028 and the Hubble constant H-0=(68.3 +/- 1.1)kms(-1)Mpc(-1) at 1.6% precision. A joint constraint with CMB lensing measured by the Planck satellite yields even more precise values: sigma(8)=0.812 +/- 0.013, S-8 equivalent to sigma(8)(Omega m/0.3)(0.5)=0.831 +/- 0.023 and H-0=(68.1 +/- 1.0)kms(-1)Mpc(-1). These measurements agree well with Lambda CDM-model extrapolations from the CMB anisotropies measured by Planck. To compare these constraints to those from the KiDS, DES, and HSC galaxy surveys, we revisit those data sets with a uniform set of assumptions, and find S-8 from all three surveys are lower than that from ACT+Planck lensing by varying levels ranging from 1.7-2.1 sigma. These results motivate further measurements and comparison, not just between the CMB anisotropies and galaxy lensing, but also between CMB lensing probing z similar to 0.5-5 on mostly-linear scales and galaxy lensing at z similar to 0.5 on smaller scales. We combine our CMB lensing measurements with CMB anisotropies to constrain extensions of Lambda CDM, limiting the sum of the neutrino masses to & sum;m(nu)<0.12 eV (95% c.l.), for example. Our results provide independent confirmation that the universe is spatially flat, conforms with general relativity, and is described remarkably well by the Lambda CDM model, while paving a promising path for neutrino physics with gravitational lensing from upcoming ground-based CMB surveys
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    The Atacama cosmology telescope: flux upper limits from a targeted search for extragalactic transients
    (2024) Hervias-Caimapo, Carlos; Naess, Sigurd; Hincks, Adam D.; Calabrese, Erminia; Devlin, Mark J.; Dunkley, Jo; Duenner, Rolando; Gallardo, Patricio A.; Hilton, Matt; Ho, Anna Y. Q.; Huffenberger, Kevin M.; Ma, Xiaoyi; Madhavacheril, Mathew S.; Niemack, Michael D.; Orlowski-Scherer, John; Page, Lyman A.; Partridge, Bruce; Puddu, Roberto; Salatino, Maria; Sifon, Cristobal; Staggs, Suzanne T.; Vargas, Cristian; Vavagiakis, Eve M.; Wollack, Edward J.
    We have performed targeted searches of known extragalactic transient events at millimetre wavelengths using nine seasons (2013-2021) of 98, 150, and 229 GHz Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) observations that mapped similar to 40 per cent of the sky for most of the data volume. Our data cover 88 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), 12 tidal disruption events (TDEs), and 203 other transients, including supernovae (SNe). We stack our ACT observations to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the maps. In all cases but one, we do not detect these transients in the ACT data. The single candidate detection (event AT2019ppm), seen at similar to 5 sigma significance in our data, appears to be due to active galactic nuclei activity in the host galaxy coincident with a transient alert. For each source in our search we provide flux upper limits. For example, the medians for the 95 per cent confidence upper limits at 98 GHz are 15, 18, and 16 mJy for GRBs, SNe, and TDEs, respectively, in the first month after discovery. The projected sensitivity of future wide-area cosmic microwave background surveys should be sufficient to detect many of these events using the methods described in this paper.
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    The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Galactic Dust Structure and the Cosmic PAH Background in Cross-correlation with WISE
    (2024) Rosado, Rodrigo Cordova; Hensley, Brandon S.; Clark, Susan E.; Duivenvoorden, Adriaan J.; Atkins, Zachary; Battistelli, Elia Stefano; Choi, Steve K.; Dunkley, Jo; Hervias-Caimapo, Carlos; Li, Zack; Louis, Thibaut; Naess, Sigurd; Page, Lyman A.; Partridge, Bruce; Sifon, Cristobal; Staggs, Suzanne T.; Vargas, Cristian; Wollack, Edward J.
    We present a cross-correlation analysis between 1 ' resolution total intensity and polarization observations from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) at 150 and 220 GHz and 15'' mid-infrared photometry from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) over 107 12(degrees)5 x 12(degrees)5 patches of sky. We detect a spatially isotropic signal in the WISExACT TT cross-power spectrum at 30 sigma significance that we interpret as the correlation between the cosmic infrared background at ACT frequencies and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission from galaxies in WISE, i.e., the cosmic PAH background. Within the Milky Way, the Galactic dust TT spectra are generally well described by power laws in & ell; over the range 10(3) < l < 10(4), but there is evidence both for variability in the power-law index and for non-power-law behavior in some regions. We measure a positive correlation between WISE total intensity and ACT E-mode polarization at 1000 < l less than or similar to 6000 at >3 sigma in each of 35 distinct similar to 100 deg(2) regions of the sky, suggesting that alignment between Galactic density structures and the local magnetic field persists to subparsec physical scales in these regions. The distribution of TE amplitudes in this l range across all 107 regions is biased to positive values, while there is no evidence for such a bias in the TB spectra. This work constitutes the highest-& ell; measurements of the Galactic dust TE spectrum to date and indicates that cross-correlation with high-resolution mid-infrared measurements of dust emission is a promising tool for constraining the spatial statistics of dust emission at millimeter wavelengths.
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    The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: map-based noise simulations for DR6
    (2023) Atkins, Zachary; Duivenvoorden, Adriaan J.; Coulton, William R.; Qu, Frank J.; Aiola, Simone; Calabrese, Erminia; Chesmore, Grace E.; Choi, Steve K.; Devlin, Mark J.; Dunkley, Jo; Hervias-Caimapo, Carlos; Guan, Yilun; La Posta, Adrien; Li, Zack; Louis, Thibaut; Madhavacheril, Mathew S.; Moodleyno, Kavilan; Naess, Sigurd; Nati, Federico; Niemack, Michael D.; Page, Lyman; Puddu, Roberto; Salatino, Maria; Sifon, Cristobal; Staggs, Suzanne T.; Vargasj, Cristian; Vavagiakis, Eve M.; Wollack, Edward J.
    The increasing statistical power of cosmic microwave background (CMB) datasets requires a commensurate effort in understanding their noise properties. The noise in maps from ground-based instruments is dominated by large-scale correlations, which poses a modeling challenge. This paper develops novel models of the complex noise covariance structure in the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Data Release 6 (ACT DR6) maps. We first enumerate the noise properties that arise from the combination of the atmosphere and the ACT scan strategy. We then prescribe a class of Gaussian, map-based noise models, including a new wavelet-based approach that uses directional wavelet kernels for modeling correlated instrumental noise. The models are empirical, whose only inputs are a small number of independent realizations of the same region of sky. We evaluate the performance of these models against the ACT DR6 data by drawing ensembles of noise realizations. Applying these simulations to the ACT DR6 power spectrum pipeline reveals a similar to 20% excess in the covariance matrix diagonal when compared to an analytic expression that assumes noise properties are uniquely described by their power spectrum. Along with our public code, mnms, this work establishes a necessary element in the science pipelines of both ACT DR6 and future ground-based CMB experiments such as the Simons Observatory (SO).
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    The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Millimeter Observations of a Population of Asteroids or: ACTeroids
    (2024) Orlowski-Scherer, John; Venterea, Ricco C.; Battaglia, Nicholas; Naess, Sigurd; Bhandarkar, Tanay; Biermann, Emily; Calabrese, Erminia; Devlin, Mark; Dunkley, Jo; Hervias-Caimapo, Carlos; Gallardo, Patricio A.; Hilton, Matt; Hincks, Adam D.; Knowles, Kenda; Li, Yaqiong; Mcmahon, Jeffrey J.; Niemack, Michael D.; Page, Lyman A.; Partridge, Bruce; Salatino, Maria; Sievers, Jonathan; Sifon, Cristobal; Staggs, Suzanne; van Engelen, Alexander; Vargas, Cristian; Vavagiakis, Eve M.; Wollack, Edward J.
    We present fluxes and light curves for a population of asteroids at millimeter wavelengths, detected by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) over 18,000 deg2 of the sky using data from 2017 to 2021. We utilize high cadence maps, which can be used in searching for moving objects such as asteroids and trans-Neptunian Objects, as well as for studying transients. We detect 170 asteroids with a signal-to-noise of at least 5 in at least one of the ACT observing bands, which are centered near 90, 150, and 220 GHz. For each asteroid, we compare the ACT measured flux to predicted fluxes from the near-Earth asteroid thermal model fit to WISE data. We confirm previous results that detected a deficit of flux at millimeter wavelengths. Moreover, we report a spectral characteristic to this deficit, such that the flux is relatively lower at 150 and 220 GHz than at 90 GHz. Additionally, we find that the deficit in flux is greater for S-type asteroids than for C-type.
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    The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Mitigating the Impact of Extragalactic Foregrounds for the DR6 Cosmic Microwave Background Lensing Analysis
    (2024) MacCrann, Niall; Sherwin, Blake D.; Qu, Frank J.; Namikawa, Toshiya; Madhavacheril, Mathew S.; Abril-Cabezas, Irene; An, Rui; Austermann, Jason E.; Battaglia, Nicholas; Battistelli, Elia S.; Beall, James A.; Bolliet, Boris; Bond, J. Richard; Cai, Hongbo; Calabrese, Erminia; Coulton, William R.; Darwish, Omar; Duff, Shannon M.; Duivenvoorden, Adriaan J.; Dunkley, Jo; Farren, Gerrit S.; Ferraro, Simone; Golec, Joseph E.; Guan, Yilun; Han, Dongwon; Hervias-Caimapo, Carlos; Hill, J. Colin; Hilton, Matt; Hlozek, Renee; Hubmayr, Johannes; Kim, Joshua; Li, Zack; Kosowsky, Arthur; Louis, Thibaut; McMahon, Jeff; A. Marques, Gabriela; Moodley, Kavilan; Naess, Sigurd; Niemack, Michael D.; Page, Lyman; Partridge, Bruce; Schaan, Emmanuel; Sehgal, Neelima; Sifon, Cristobal; Wollack, Edward J.; Salatino, Maria; Ullom, Joel N.; Van Lanen, Jeff; Van Engelen, Alexander; Wenzl, Lukas
    We investigate the impact and mitigation of extragalactic foregrounds for the cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing power spectrum analysis of Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) data release 6 (DR6) data. Two independent microwave sky simulations are used to test a range of mitigation strategies. We demonstrate that finding and then subtracting point sources, finding and then subtracting models of clusters, and using a profile bias-hardened lensing estimator together reduce the fractional biases to well below statistical uncertainties, with the inferred lensing amplitude, A lens, biased by less than 0.2 sigma. We also show that another method where a model for the cosmic infrared background (CIB) contribution is deprojected and high-frequency data from Planck is included has similar performance. Other frequency-cleaned options do not perform as well, either incurring a large noise cost or resulting in biased recovery of the lensing spectrum. In addition to these simulation-based tests, we also present null tests on the ACT DR6 data for sensitivity of our lensing spectrum estimation to differences in foreground levels between the two ACT frequencies used, while nulling the CMB lensing signal. These tests pass whether the nulling is performed at the map or bandpower level. The CIB-deprojected measurement performed on the DR6 data is consistent with our baseline measurement, implying that contamination from the CIB is unlikely to significantly bias the DR6 lensing spectrum. This collection of tests gives confidence that the ACT DR6 lensing measurements and cosmological constraints presented in companion papers to this work are robust to extragalactic foregrounds.
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    The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Systematic Transient Search of 3 Day Maps
    (2023) Li, Yaqiong; Biermann, Emily; Naess, Sigurd; Aiola, Simone; An, Rui; Battaglia, Nicholas; Bhandarkar, Tanay; Calabrese, Erminia; Choi, Steve K.; Crowley, Kevin T.; Devlin, Mark; Duell, Cody J.; Duff, Shannon M.; Dunkley, Jo; Dunner, Rolando; Gallardo, Patricio A.; Guan, Yilun; Hervias-Caimapo, Carlos; Hincks, Adam D.; Hubmayr, Johannes; Huffenberger, Kevin M.; Hughes, John P.; Kosowsky, Arthur; Louis, Thibaut; Mallaby-Kay, Maya; Mcmahon, Jeff; Nati, Federico; Niemack, Michael D.; Orlowski-Scherer, John; Page, Lyman; Salatino, Maria; Sifon, Cristobal; Staggs, Suzanne T.; Vargas, Cristian; Vavagiakis, Eve M.; Wang, Yuhan; Wollack, Edward J.
    We conduct a systematic search for transients in 3 yr of data (2017-2019) from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). ACT covers 40% of the sky at three bands spanning from 77-277 GHz. Analysis of 3 day mean-subtracted sky maps, which were match filtered for point sources, yielded 29 transient detections. Eight of these transients are due to known asteroids, and three others were previously published. Four of these events occur in areas with poor noise models and thus we cannot be confident they are real transients. We are left with 14 new transient events occurring at 11 unique locations. All of these events are associated with either rotationally variable stars or cool stars. Ten events have flat or falling spectra indicating radiation from synchrotron emission. One event has a rising spectrum indicating a different engine for the flare.
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    The Simons Observatory: Combining cross-spectral foreground cleaning with multitracer B- mode delensing for improved constraints on inflation
    (2024) Hertig, Emilie; Wolz, Kevin; Namikawa, Toshiya; Lizancos, Anton Baleato; Azzoni, Susanna; Abril-Cabezas, Irene; Alonso, David; Baccigalupi, Carlo; Calabrese, Erminia; Challinor, Anthony; Errard, Josquin; Fabbian, Giulio; Hervias-Caimapo, Carlos; Jost, Baptiste; Krachmalnicoff, Nicoletta; Lonappan, Anto I.; Morshed, Magdy; Pagano, Luca; Sherwin, Blake
    The Simons Observatory (SO), due to start full science operations in early 2025, aims to set tight constraints on inflationary physics by inferring the tensor-to-scalar ratio r from measurements of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization B-modes. Its nominal design including three small-aperture telescopes (SATs) targets a precision sigma(r ( r 1 / 4 0) ) <= 0.003 without delensing. Achieving this goal and further reducing uncertainties requires a thorough understanding and mitigation of other large-scale B-mode sources such as Galactic foregrounds and weak gravitational lensing. We present an analysis pipeline aiming to estimate r by including delensing within a cross-spectral likelihood, and demonstrate it for the first time on SO-like simulations accounting for various levels of foreground complexity, inhomogeneous noise and partial sky coverage. As introduced in an earlier SO delensing paper, lensing Bmodes are synthesized using internal CMB lensing reconstructions as well as Planck-like cosmic infrared background maps and LSST-like galaxy density maps. We then extend SO's power-spectrum-based foreground- cleaning algorithm to include all auto- and cross-spectra between the lensing template and the SAT Bmodes in the likelihood function. This allows us to constrain r and the parameters of our foreground model simultaneously. Within this framework, we demonstrate the equivalence of map-based and cross-spectral delensing and use it to motivate an optimized pixel-weighting scheme for power spectrum estimation. We start by validating our pipeline in the simplistic case of uniform foreground spectral energy distributions. In the absence of primordial Bmodes, we find that the 16 statistical uncertainty on r, 6(r), ( r ) , decreases by 37% as a result of delensing. Tensor modes at the level of r 1 / 4 0.01 are successfully detected by our pipeline. Even when using more realistic foreground models including spatial variations in the dust and synchrotron spectral properties, we obtain unbiased estimates of r both with and without delensing by employing the moment-expansion method. In this case, uncertainties are increased due to the higher number of model parameters, and delensing-related improvements range between 27% and 31%. These results constitute the first realistic assessment of the delensing performance at SO's nominal sensitivity level.
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    The Simons Observatory: Pipeline comparison and validation for large-scale B-modes
    (2024) Wolz, Kevin; Azzoni, Susanna; Hervias-Caimapo, Carlos; Errard, Josquin; Krachmalnicoff, Nicoletta; Alonso, David; Baccigalupi, Carlo; Baleato Lizancos, Anton; Brown, Michael L.; Calabrese, Erminia; Chluba, Jens; Dunkley, Jo; Fabbian, Giulio; Galitzki, Nicholas; Jost, Baptiste; Morshed, Magdy; Nati, Federico
    Context. The upcoming Simons Observatory Small Aperture Telescopes aim at achieving a constraint on the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio r at the level of sigma(r = 0)less than or similar to 0.003, observing the polarized CMB in the presence of partial sky coverage, cosmic variance, inhomogeneous non-white noise, and Galactic foregrounds. Aims. We present three different analysis pipelines able to constrain r given the latest available instrument performance, and compare their predictions on a set of sky simulations that allow us to explore a number of Galactic foreground models and elements of instrumental noise, relevant for the Simons Observatory. Methods. The three pipelines employ different combinations of parametric and non-parametric component separation at the map and power spectrum levels, and use B-mode purification to estimate the CMB B-mode power spectrum. We applied them to a common set of simulated realistic frequency maps, and compared and validated them with focus on their ability to extract robust constraints on the tensor-to-scalar ratio r. We evaluated their performance in terms of bias and statistical uncertainty on this parameter. Results. In most of the scenarios the three methodologies achieve similar performance. Nevertheless, several simulations with complex foreground signals lead to a > 2 sigma bias on r if analyzed with the default versions of these pipelines, highlighting the need for more sophisticated pipeline components that marginalize over foreground residuals. We show two such extensions, using power-spectrum-based and map-based methods, that are able to fully reduce the bias on r below the statistical uncertainties in all foreground models explored, at a moderate cost in terms of sigma(r).