Small Angular Scale Measurements of the CMB Temperature Power Spectrum from QUaD

TL;DR

This paper reports measurements of the CMB temperature anisotropy at small angular scales (multipoles 2000-3000) from the QUaD telescope, showing results consistent with the standard LCDM model and no significant Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect detection.

Contribution

First measurements of small-scale CMB temperature anisotropy from QUaD in the specified multipole range, including analysis of point source contamination and SZ contribution.

Findings

Results consistent with LCDM model expectations.

No strong evidence of Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect.

Residual point source contribution modeled and accounted for.

Abstract

We present measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation temperature anisotropy in the multipole range 2000<ell<3000 from the QUaD telescope's second and third observing seasons. After masking the brightest point sources our results are consistent with the primary LCDM expectation alone. We estimate the contribution of residual (un-masked) radio point sources using a model calibrated to our own bright source observations, and a full simulation of the source finding and masking procedure. Including this contribution slightly improves the chi^2. We also fit a standard SZ template to the bandpowers and see no strong evidence of an SZ contribution, which is as expected for sigma_8 approx 0.8.