Observing cosmic microwave background polarization through ice |
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| Authors: | Luca Pietranera Stefan A Buehler Paolo G Calisse Claudia Emde Darren Hayton Viju Oommen John Bruno Maffei Lucio Piccirillo Giampaolo Pisano Giorgio Savini T R Sreerekha |
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| Institution: | School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL;School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 3AA;Institut fr Umweltphysik, Universität Bremen, Bremen 28359, Deutschland;Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) Institut fuer Physik der Atmosphaere, Oberpfaffenhofen D-82234, Germany;Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Miami, USA;Met Office, Exeter EX1 3PB |
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| Abstract: | Ice crystal clouds in the upper troposphere can generate polarization signals at the μK level. This signal can seriously affect very sensitive ground-based searches for E and B modes of cosmic microwave background polarization. In this paper, we estimate this effect within the C?OVER experiment observing bands (97, 150 and 220 GHz) for the selected observing site (Llano de Chajnantor, Atacama desert, Chile). The results show that the polarization signal from the clouds can be of the order of or even bigger than the cosmic microwave background expected polarization. Climatological data suggest that this signal is fairly constant over the whole year in Antarctica. On the other hand, the stronger seasonal variability in Atacama allows for a 50 per cent of clean observations during the dry season. |
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| Keywords: | atmospheric effects techniques: polarimetric cosmic microwave background cosmology: observations |
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