1999/09/15 by A. H. Jaffe, Andrew H. Jaffe, Marc Kamionkowski +2 · 8 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.61.083501
published as Phys.Rev. D61 (2000) 083501 · 18 pages, 6 figures
arxiv created 1999/09/15 · openalex publication_date 2000/03/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We calculate the detectability of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) as a function of the sky coverage, angular resolution, and instrumental sensitivity for a hypothetical experiment. We consider the gradient component of the polarization from density perturbations (scalar modes) and the curl component from gravitational waves (tensor modes). We show that the amplitude (and thus the detectability) of the polarization from density perturbations is roughly the same in any model as long as the model fits the big-bang-nucleosynthesis (BBN) baryon density and degree-scale anisotropy measurements. The degree-scale polarization is smaller (and accordingly more difficult to detect) if the baryon density is higher. We show that the sensitivity to the polarization from density perturbations and gravitational waves is improved (by a factor of 30) in a fixed-time experiment with a deeper survey of a smaller region of sky.