Work

Detection of gravitational lensing in the cosmic microwave background

Year: 2007

Type: article

Abstract: Gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), a long-standing prediction of the standard cosmological model, is ultimately expected to be an important source of cosmological information, but first detection has not been achieved to date. We report a $3.4\ensuremath{\sigma}$ detection, by applying quadratic estimator techniques to all sky maps from the Wilkinson microwave anisotropy probe (WMAP) satellite, and correlating the result with radio galaxy counts from the NRAO VLA sky survey (NVSS). We present our methodology including a detailed discussion of potential contaminants. Our error estimates include systematic uncertainties from density gradients in NVSS, beam effects in WMAP, galactic microwave foregrounds, resolved and unresolved CMB point sources, and the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect.

Source: Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields

DOI: 10.1103/physrevd.76.043510

Authors: Kendrick M. Smith, Oliver Zahn, Olivier Doré

Institutions: University of Chicago, Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian, University of Toronto, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics

Language: English

Topic: Cosmology and Gravitation Theories

Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Awards: Center for Cosmological Physics, Theoretical Studies of Fluctuations in the Redshifted 21 cm Line, PROBING THE END OF THE DARK AGES