The bispectrum of polarized galactic foregrounds [CEA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1901.04515


Understanding the properties of the galactic emission at millimetre wavelengths is important for studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In this work we explore the bispectrum, the harmonic equivalent of the three point function, from galactic dust and synchrotron emission. We find that the synchrotron and galactic dust have strong temperature bispectra, with significant contributions in the squeezed limit. Additionally, we find that the dust also has strong polarised bispectra that also peak in the squeezed configuration. We explore parity odd bispectra, such as BTT bispectra, and find strong parity odd bispectra for the galactic dust notably in BTT, BTE and BEE configurations. We find no evidence for polarised synchrotron bispectra and no evidence for cross bispectra between the dust and synchrotron emission. The strong foreground bispectra discussed here need to be carefully controlled to avoid biasing measurements of primordial non-Gaussianity. Finally we use these bispectra tools to test for residual foregrounds in the component separated Planck maps and find no evidence of residual foregrounds. These tools will be useful for characterizing residual foregrounds in component separated maps, particularly for experiments with less frequency coverage than the Planck satellite.

Read this paper on arXiv…

W. Coulton and D. Spergel
Wed, 16 Jan 19
6/76

Comments: To be submitted to JCAP