Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP)Observations: Beam Maps and Window Functions

TL;DR

The paper details improved beam pattern measurements for WMAP's five-year data, enhancing accuracy in cosmic microwave background analysis through advanced physical optics fits and better calibration, reducing errors significantly.

Contribution

It introduces a new five-year beam analysis with physical optics fits on both sides and improved error reduction over previous results.

Findings

Main-beam solid angle increased by ~1% for some detectors

Beam transfer function errors reduced by a factor of ~2

Jupiter radiometry used for calibration with ~0.5% error

Abstract

Cosmology and other scientific results from the WMAP mission require an accurate knowledge of the beam patterns in flight. While the degree of beam knowledge for the WMAP one-year and three-year results was unprecedented for a CMB experiment, we have significantly improved the beam determination as part of the five-year data release. Physical optics fits are done on both the A and the B sides for the first time. The cutoff scale of the fitted distortions on the primary mirror is reduced by a factor of ~2 from previous analyses. These changes enable an improvement in the hybridization of Jupiter data with beam models, which is optimized with respect to error in the main beam solid angle. An increase in main-beam solid angle of ~1% is found for the V2 and W1-W4 differencing assemblies. Although the five-year results are statistically consistent with previous ones, the errors in the five-year beam transfer functions are reduced by a factor of ~2 as compared to the three-year analysis. We present radiometry of the planet Jupiter as a test of the beam consistency and as a calibration standard; for an individual differencing assembly, errors in the measured disk temperature are ~0.5%.