Characterization of the Millimeter-Wave Polarization of Centaurus A with QUaD

Zemcov, M. and Ade, P. and Bock, J. and Bowden, M. and Brown, M. L. and Cahill, G. and Castro, P. G. and Church, S. and Culverhouse, T. and Friedman, R. B. and Ganga, K. and Gear, W. K. and Gupta, S. and Hinderks, J. and Kovac, J. and Lange, A. E. and Leitch, E. and Melhuish, S. J. and Memari, Y. and Murphy, J. A. and Orlando, A. and O'Sullivan, C. and Piccirillo, L. and Pryke, C. and Rajguru, N. and Rusholme, B. and Schwarz, R. and Taylor, A. N. and Thompson, K. L. and Turner, A. H. and Wu, E. Y. S. (2010) Characterization of the Millimeter-Wave Polarization of Centaurus A with QUaD. Astrophysical Journal, 710 (2). pp. 1541-1550. ISSN 0004-637X http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20100224-112332982

PDF - Published Version
Restricted to Repository administrators only
See Usage Policy.
502Kb

Use this Persistent URL to link to this item: http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20100224-112332982

Abstract

Centaurus (Cen) A represents one of the best candidates for an isolated, compact, highly polarized source that is bright at typical cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment frequencies. We present measurements of the 4° × 2° region centered on Cen A with QUaD, a CMB polarimeter whose absolute polarization angle is known to an accuracy of 0°.5. Simulations are performed to assess the effect of misestimation of the instrumental parameters on the final measurement and systematic errors due to the field's background structure and temporal variability from Cen A's nuclear region are determined. The total (Q, U) of the inner lobe region is (1.00 ± 0.07(stat.) ± 0.04(sys.), -1.72 ± 0.06 ± 0.05) Jy at 100 GHz and (0.80 ± 0.06 ± 0.06, – 1.40 ± 0.07 ± 0.08) Jy at 150 GHz, leading to polarization angles and total errors of –30.°0 ± 1.°1 and –29.°1 ± 1.°7. These measurements will allow the use of Cen A as a polarized calibration source for future millimeter experiments.

Item Type:

Article

Additional Information:

© 2010 American Astronomical Society. Print publication: Issue 2 (2010 February 20); received 2009 August 17; accepted for publication 2009 December 30; published 2010 February 1. QUaD is funded by the National Science Foundation in the USA, through grants ANT-0338138, ANT-0338335, and ANT- 0338238, by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) in the UK and by the Science Foundation Ireland. The BOOMERanG collaboration kindly allowed the use of their CMB maps for our calibration purposes. M.Z. acknowledges support from aNASA Postdoctoral Fellowship. P.G.C. acknowledges funding from the Portuguese FCT. S.E.C. acknowledges support from a Stanford Terman Fellowship. J.R.H. acknowledges the support of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a Stanford Graduate Fellowship, and a NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship. Y.M. acknowledges support from a SUPA Prize studentship. C.P. acknowledges partial support from the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics through the grant NSF PHY-0114422. E.Y.W. acknowledges receipt of an NDSEG fellowship.

Funders:

Funding Agency	Grant Number
NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship	UNSPECIFIED
Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)	UNSPECIFIED
Stanford Terman Fellowship	UNSPECIFIED
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship	UNSPECIFIED
Stanford Graduate Fellowship	UNSPECIFIED
SUPA Prize studentship	UNSPECIFIED
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics	UNSPECIFIED
NSF	PHY-0114422
National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) fellowship	UNSPECIFIED

Subject Keywords:

cosmic background radiation; galaxies: individual (Centaurus A); instrumentation: polarimeters; radio continuum: general

Record Number:

CaltechAUTHORS:20100224-112332982

Persistent URL:

http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20100224-112332982

Related URLs:

Official Citation:

Characterization of the Millimeter-Wave Polarization of Centaurus A with QUaD M. Zemcov, P. Ade, J. Bock, M. Bowden, M. L. Brown, G. Cahill, P. G. Castro, S. Church, T. Culverhouse, R. B. Friedman, K. Ganga, W. K. Gear, S. Gupta, J. Hinderks, J. Kovac, A. E. Lange, E. Leitch, S. J. Melhuish, Y. Memari, J. A. Murphy, A. Orlando, C. O' Sullivan, L. Piccirillo, C. Pryke, N. Rajguru, B. Rusholme, R. Schwarz, A. N. Taylor, K. L. Thompson, A. H. Turner, E. Y. S. Wu (QUaD collaboration) 2010 ApJ 710 1541-1550 doi: 10.1088/0004-637X/710/2/1541

Usage Policy:

No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided.

ID Code:

17581

Collection:

CaltechAUTHORS

Deposited By:

Jason Perez

Deposited On:

24 Feb 2010 21:19

Last Modified:

26 Dec 2012 11:47

Repository Staff Only: item control page