The anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) provide our best laboratory for testing models of the formation and evolution of large-scale structure. The rich features in the CMB anisotropy spectrum, in combination with highly precise observations and theoretical predictions, also allow us to simultaneously constrain a number of cosmological parameters. As observations have progressed, measurements at smaller angular scales have provided increasing leverage. These smaller angular scales provide sensitive measures of the matter density through the effect of gravitational lensing. In this work, we provide an analytic explanation of the manner in which the lensing of CMB anisotropies depends on the matter density, finding that the dominant effect comes from the shape of the matter power spectrum set by the decay of small-scale potentials between horizon crossing and matter-radiation equality.

The Davis Meeting on Cosmic Inflation marked an exciting milestone on the road to precision cosmology. This is the index page for the proceedings of the conference. Individual proceedings contributions, when they appear on this archive, are linked from this page.

We present component-separated maps of the primary cosmic microwave background/kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) amplitude and the thermal SZ Compton-y parameter, created using data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and the Planck satellite. These maps, which cover the a1/42500 deg2 of the southern sky imaged by the SPT-SZ survey, represent a significant improvement over previous such products available in this region by virtue of their higher angular resolution ( 1.′25 for our highest-resolution Compton-y maps) and lower noise at small angular scales. In this work we detail the construction of these maps using linear combination techniques, including our method for limiting the correlation of our lowest-noise Compton-y map products with the cosmic infrared background. We perform a range of validation tests on these data products to test our sky modeling and combination algorithms, and we find good performance in all of these tests. Recognizing the potential utility of these data products for a wide range of astrophysical and cosmological analyses, including studies of the gas properties of galaxies, groups, and clusters, we make these products publicly available at http://pole.uchicago.edu/public/data/sptsz_ymap and on the NASA/LAMBDA website.

We show the improvement to cosmological constraints from galaxy cluster surveys with the addition of cosmic microwave background (CMB)-cluster lensing data. We explore the cosmological implications of adding mass information from the 3.1σ detection of gravitational lensing of the CMB by galaxy clusters to the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) selected galaxy cluster sample from the 2500 deg2 SPT-SZ survey and targeted optical and X-ray follow-up data. In the ΛCDM model, the combination of the cluster sample with the Planck power spectrum measurements prefers σ8ωm/0.30.5=0.831±0.020 . Adding the cluster data reduces the uncertainty on this quantity by a factor of 1.4, which is unchanged whether the 3.1σ CMB-cluster lensing measurement is included or not. We then forecast the impact of CMB-cluster lensing measurements with future cluster catalogs. Adding CMB-cluster lensing measurements to the SZ cluster catalog of the ongoing SPT-3G survey is expected to improve the expected constraint on the dark energy equation of state w by a factor of 1.3 to σ(w) = 0.19. We find the largest improvements from CMB-cluster lensing measurements to be for σ 8, where adding CMB-cluster lensing data to the cluster number counts reduces the expected uncertainty on σ 8 by respective factors of 2.4 and 3.6 for SPT-3G and CMB-S4.

The Planck cosmic microwave background temperature data are best fit with a ΛCDM model that mildly contradicts constraints from other cosmological probes. The South Pole Telescope (SPT) 2540 SPT-SZ survey offers measurements on sub-degree angular scales (multipoles ) with sufficient precision to use as an independent check of the Planck data. Here we build on the recent joint analysis of the SPT-SZ and Planck data in Hou et al. by comparing ΛCDM parameter estimates using the temperature power spectrum from both data sets in the SPT-SZ survey region. We also restrict the multipole range used in parameter fitting to focus on modes measured well by both SPT and Planck, thereby greatly reducing sample variance as a driver of parameter differences and creating a stringent test for systematic errors. We find no evidence of systematic errors from these tests. When we expand the maximum multipole of SPT data used, we see low-significance shifts in the angular scale of the sound horizon and the physical baryon and cold dark matter densities, with a resulting trend to higher Hubble constant. When we compare SPT and Planck data on the SPT-SZ sky patch to Planck full-sky data but keep the multipole range restricted, we find differences in the parameters n s and Ase-2τ. We perform further checks, investigating instrumental effects and modeling assumptions, and we find no evidence that the effects investigated are responsible for any of the parameter shifts. Taken together, these tests reveal no evidence for systematic errors in SPT or Planck data in the overlapping sky coverage and multipole range and at most weak evidence for a breakdown of ΛCDM or systematic errors influencing either the Planck data outside the SPT-SZ survey area or the SPT data at ℓ >.

We present three maps of the millimeter-wave sky created by combining data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and the Planck satellite. We use data from the SPT-SZ survey, a survey of 2540 deg2 of the the sky with arcminute resolution in three bands centered at 95, 150, and 220 GHz, and the full-mission Planck temperature data in the 100, 143, and 217 GHz bands. A linear combination of the SPT-SZ and Planck data is computed in spherical harmonic space, with weights derived from the noise of both instruments. This weighting scheme results in Planck data providing most of the large-angular-scale information in the combined maps, with the smaller-scale information coming from SPT-SZ data. A number of tests have been done on the maps. We find their angular power spectra to agree very well with theoretically predicted spectra and previously published results.

We report constraints on cosmological parameters from the angular power spectrum of a cosmic microwave background (CMB) gravitational lensing potential map created using temperature data from 2500 deg2 of South Pole Telescope (SPT) data supplemented with data from Planck in the same sky region, with the statistical power in the combined map primarily from the SPT data. We fit the lensing power spectrum to a model including cold dark matter and a cosmological constant (λCDM), and to models with single-parameter extensions to λCDM. We find constraints that are comparable to and consistent with those found using the full-sky Planck CMB lensing data, e.g., σ8ωm0.25 = 0.598 ± 0.024 from the lensing data alone with weak priors placed on other parameters. Combining with primary CMB data, we explore single-parameter extensions to λCDM. We find or ωk = -0.012-0.0230.021 or Mv < 0.70 eV at 95% confidence, in good agreement with results including the lensing potential as measured by Planck. We include two parameters that scale the effect of lensing on the CMB: AL, which scales the lensing power spectrum in both the lens reconstruction power and in the smearing of the acoustic peaks, and Aφφ, which scales only the amplitude of the lensing reconstruction power spectrum. We find Aφφ × AL = 1.01 ± 0.08 for the lensing map made from combined SPT and Planck data, indicating that the amount of lensing is in excellent agreement with expectations from the observed CMB angular power spectrum when not including the information from smearing of the acoustic peaks.

We present a cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing map produced from a linear combination of South Pole Telescope (SPT) and Planck temperature data. The 150 GHz temperature data from the 2500 deg2 SPT-SZ survey is combined with the Planck 143 GHz data in harmonic space to obtain a temperature map that has a broader ℓ coverage and less noise than either individual map. Using a quadratic estimator technique on this combined temperature map, we produce a map of the gravitational lensing potential projected along the line of sight. We measure the auto-spectrum of the lensing potential CLφφ, and compare it to the theoretical prediction for a ΛCDM cosmology consistent with the Planck 2015 data set, finding a best-fit amplitude of 0.95-0.06+0.06(stat.)0.01+0.01(sys.). The null hypothesis of no lensing is rejected at a significance of 24σ. One important use of such a lensing potential map is in cross-correlations with other dark matter tracers. We demonstrate this cross-correlation in practice by calculating the cross-spectrum, CLφG, between the SPT+Planck lensing map and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) galaxies. We fit CLφG to a power law of the form PL = a(L/L0)-b with a, L 0, and b fixed, and find ηφG = CLφG/PL = 0.94-0.04+0.04, which is marginally lower, but in good agreement with ηφG = 1.00-0.01+0.02, the best-fit amplitude for the cross-correlation of Planck-2015 CMB lensing and WISE galaxies over ∼67% of the sky. The lensing potential map presented here will be used for cross-correlation studies with the Dark Energy Survey, whose footprint nearly completely covers the SPT 2500 deg2 field.

We present measurements of the E-mode polarization angular auto-power spectrum (EE) and temperature-E-mode cross-power spectrum (TE) of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using 150 GHz data from three seasons of SPTpol observations. We report the power spectra over the spherical harmonic multipole range 50 < ℓ ≤ 8000 and detect nine acoustic peaks in the EE spectrum with high signal-to-noise ratio. These measurements are the most sensitive to date of the EE and TE power spectra at ℓ > 1050 and ℓ > 1475, respectively. The observations cover 500 , a fivefold increase in area compared to previous SPTpol analyses, which increases our sensitivity to the photon diffusion damping tail of the CMB power spectra enabling tighter constraints on ΛCDM model extensions. After masking all sources with unpolarized flux mJy, we place a 95% confidence upper limit on residual polarized point-source power of at Dℓ = ℓ(ℓ+1)ℓℓ/2π < 0.107 μK2 at ℓ = 3000, suggesting that the EE damping tail dominates foregrounds to at least ℓ= 4050 with modest source masking. We find that the SPTpol data set is in mild tension with the ΛCDM model (2.1 δ), and different data splits prefer parameter values that differ at the ∼ 1 δ level. When fitting SPTpol data at ℓ < 1000, we find cosmological parameter constraints consistent with those for Planck temperature. Including SPTpol data at ℓ> 1000 results in a preference for a higher value of the expansion rate (H071.3 ± 2.1 Km s-1 Mpc-1) and a lower value for present-day density fluctuations (δ8 =0.77 ±0.02).

Abstract Including millimeter-wave data in multiwavelength studies of the variability of active galactic nuclei (AGN) can provide insights into AGN physics that are not easily accessible at other wavelengths. We demonstrate in this work the potential of cosmic microwave background (CMB) telescopes to provide long-term, high-cadence millimeter-wave AGN monitoring over large fractions of sky. We report on a pilot study using data from the SPTpol instrument on the South Pole Telescope (SPT), which was designed to observe the CMB at arcminute and larger angular scales. Between 2013 and 2016, SPTpol was used primarily to observe a single 500 deg2 field, covering the entire field several times per day with detectors sensitive to radiation in bands centered at 95 and 150 GHz. We use SPT 150 GHz observations to create AGN light curves, and we compare these millimeter-wave light curves to those at other wavelengths, in particular γ-ray and optical. In this Letter, we focus on a single source, PKS 2326-502, which has extensive, day-timescale monitoring data in gamma-ray, optical, and now millimeter-wave between 2013 and 2016. We find PKS 2326-502 to be in a flaring state in the first 2 yr of this monitoring, and we present a search for evidence of correlated variability between millimeter-wave, optical R-band, and γ-ray observations. This pilot study is paving the way for AGN monitoring with current and upcoming CMB experiments such as SPT-3G, Simons Observatory, and CMB-S4, including multiwavelength studies with facilities such as Vera C. Rubin Observatories Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.