Multiscale feature integration network for inpainting of full-sky CMB $B$-modes

TL;DR

This paper introduces SkyReconNet-P, a neural network for inpainting incomplete CMB polarization maps, improving the recovery of large-scale features and enabling accurate cosmological parameter estimation.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel multiscale convolutional neural network for inpainting CMB polarization maps, enhancing map reconstruction and power spectrum accuracy over previous methods.

Findings

Reproduces large-scale map morphology effectively.

Achieves low multipole bias in E-mode spectrum reconstruction.

Enables accurate cosmological parameter inference from inpainted maps.

Abstract

Foreground masking and incomplete sky coverage complicate CMB polarization analyses by inducing mode coupling and imperfect E/B separation, with particularly strong impact on searches for primordial $B$-modes. We present SkyReconNet-P, a convolutional neural network for inpainting CMB polarization maps that extends the SkyReconNet framework to jointly reconstruct the polarization $(Q,U)$ maps from partial-sky observations. The method combines regional processing with a hybrid design, utilizing standard convolution and dilated convolution to do a multiscale feature integration. We evaluate performance at both the map and power spectrum level using two masking scenarios: a generated random mask and the Planck 2018 common polarization inpainting mask. For both masking scenarios, SkyReconNet-P reproduces the large-scale morphology of the target maps. In power-spectrum space, we find that the reconstructed $E$-mode spectrum closely tracks the target at low multipoles, while small biases emerge at higher $\ell$. For $B$-mode, the raw reconstructed spectra exhibit a larger multipole-dependent bias, which we mitigate using a simulation-based linear calibration. We show that the calibrated $B$-mode spectrum preserve more information by comparing it with spectrum estimation using pseudo-$C_\ell$. Finally, we demonstrate cosmological parameter inference from calibrated reconstructed spectra by fitting $(r, A_{\rm lens})$ with a Gaussian bandpower likelihood, recovering posteriors consistent with injected parameters across three test ensembles down to $r \sim 10^{-3}$. These results support inpainting as a complementary route to cut-sky approaches when downstream pipelines can greatly benefit from statistically well-characterized, gap-filled polarization maps.