Princeton University Gravity Group Seminar
Topic 1: Map-based Noise Simulations for ACT Data Topic 2: r Error Budget for SPIDER's First Flight
Abstract 1: The next analysis of ACT data will use precision-cosmology-capable maps of the microwave sky based on data taken by the Advanced ACT detector arrays since 2017. The maps will cover the full Advanced ACT footprint (~44% f_sky, see Aiola et al. 2020 and Mallaby-Kay et al. 2021), and therefore will contain spatially inhomogeneous, anisotropic noise. I will discuss ongoing work aimed at adapting a "tiled constant correlation" noise model, originally presented in Naess et al. 2020, to produce fast, map-based noise simulations for use in validation and analysis pipelines for these new data. This includes work to minimize computation time and disk space, as well as tools to provide rapid feedback on simulation performance. Finally, I will summarize the current simulation status, and outline some issues which will require more development work.
Abstract 2: SPIDER is a balloon-borne telescope designed to map the B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background. SPIDER's 2015 flight mapped 4.8% of the sky at 95 and 150 GHz, with B-mode results published recently on arXiv (2103.13334). I will discuss our error on the tensor-to-scalar ratio (r); what goes into it and what can be improved with another flight.