QUIJOTE scientific results XIX. New constraints on the synchrotron spectral index using a semi-blind component separation method

TL;DR

This paper presents a new semi-blind method combining moment expansion and constrained-ILC to estimate the synchrotron spectral index from multi-frequency polarised data, providing refined constraints and revealing a spectral steepening at higher latitudes.

Contribution

The authors introduce a novel semi-blind approach for mapping synchrotron spectral parameters, complementing existing parametric methods with a new moment-based technique.

Findings

Estimated synchrotron spectral index of -3.11 in the Galactic plane.

Detected a moderate steepening of the spectral index at high latitudes.

Results are consistent with previous parametric analyses, confirming the method's validity.

Abstract

We introduce a novel approach to estimate the spectral index, $\beta_s$, of polarised synchrotron emission, combining the moment expansion of CMB and the constrained-ILC. We reconstructed the maps of the first two synchrotron moments, combining multi-frequency data, and applied the `T-T plot' technique between two moment maps to estimate the synchrotron spectral index. This approach offers a new technique for mapping the foreground spectral parameters, complementing the model-based parametric component separation methods. Applying this technique, we derived a new constraint on the spectral index of polarised synchrotron emission using QUIJOTE MFI wide-survey 11 and 13 GHz data, Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data at K and Ka bands, and Planck LFI 30 GHz data. In the Galactic plane and North Polar Spur regions, we obtained an inverse-variance-weighted mean synchrotron index of $\beta_s = -3.11$ with a standard deviation of $0.21$ due to intrinsic scatter, consistent with previous results based on parametric methods using the same dataset. We find that the inverse-variance-weighted mean spectral index, including both statistical and systematic uncertainties, is $\beta_s^{\rm plane} = -3.05 \pm 0.01$ in the Galactic plane and $\beta_s^{\rm high\text{-}lat} = -3.13 \pm 0.02$ at high latitudes, indicating a moderate steepening of the spectral index from low to high Galactic latitudes. Our analysis indicates that, within the current upper limit on the Anomalous Microwave Emission polarisation fraction, our results are not subject to any appreciable bias. Furthermore, we infer the spectral index over the entire QUIJOTE survey region, partitioning the sky into 21 patches. This technique can be further extended to constrain the synchrotron spectral curvature by reconstructing higher-order moments when better-quality data become available.