We present a catalog of emissive point sources detected in the SPT-SZ survey, a contiguous 2530 square degree area surveyed with the South Pole Telescope (SPT) from 2008-2011 in three bands centered ...at 95, 150, and 220 GHz. The catalog contains 4845 sources measured at a significance of 4.5 or greater in at least one band, corresponding to detections above approximately 9.8, 5.8, and 20.4 mJy in 95, 150, and 220 GHz, respectively. The spectral behavior in the SPT bands is used for source classification into two populations based on the underlying physical mechanisms of compact, emissive sources that are bright at millimeter wavelengths: synchrotron radiation from active galactic nuclei and thermal emission from dust. The latter population includes a component of high-redshift sources often referred to as submillimeter galaxies (SMGs). In the relatively bright flux ranges probed by the survey, these sources are expected to be magnified by strong gravitational lensing. The survey also contains sources consistent with protoclusters, groups of dusty galaxies at high redshift undergoing collapse. We cross-match the SPT-SZ catalog with external catalogs at radio, infrared, and X-ray wavelengths and identify available redshift information. The catalog splits into 3980 synchrotron-dominated and 865 dust-dominated sources, and we determine a list of 506 SMGs. Ten sources in the catalog are identified as stars. We calculate number counts for the full catalog, and synchrotron and dusty components, using a bootstrap method and compare our measured counts with models. This paper represents the third and final catalog of point sources in the SPT-SZ survey.
The Planck cosmic microwave background temperature data are best fit with a ΛCDM model that mildly contradicts constraints from other cosmological probes. The South Pole Telescope (SPT) 2540 SPT-SZ ...survey offers measurements on sub-degree angular scales (multipoles ) with sufficient precision to use as an independent check of the Planck data. Here we build on the recent joint analysis of the SPT-SZ and Planck data in Hou et al. by comparing ΛCDM parameter estimates using the temperature power spectrum from both data sets in the SPT-SZ survey region. We also restrict the multipole range used in parameter fitting to focus on modes measured well by both SPT and Planck, thereby greatly reducing sample variance as a driver of parameter differences and creating a stringent test for systematic errors. We find no evidence of systematic errors from these tests. When we expand the maximum multipole of SPT data used, we see low-significance shifts in the angular scale of the sound horizon and the physical baryon and cold dark matter densities, with a resulting trend to higher Hubble constant. When we compare SPT and Planck data on the SPT-SZ sky patch to Planck full-sky data but keep the multipole range restricted, we find differences in the parameters ns and . We perform further checks, investigating instrumental effects and modeling assumptions, and we find no evidence that the effects investigated are responsible for any of the parameter shifts. Taken together, these tests reveal no evidence for systematic errors in SPT or Planck data in the overlapping sky coverage and multipole range and at most weak evidence for a breakdown of ΛCDM or systematic errors influencing either the Planck data outside the SPT-SZ survey area or the SPT data at .
We report a B-mode power spectrum measurement from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization anisotropy observations made using the SPTpol instrument on the South Pole Telescope. This work ...uses 500 deg2 of SPTpol data, a five-fold increase over the last SPTpol B-mode release. As a result, the bandpower uncertainties have been reduced by more than a factor of two, and the measurement extends to lower multipoles: 52 < ℓ < 2301 . Data from both 95 and 150 GHz are used, allowing for three cross-spectra: 95 GHz × 95 GHz , 95 GHz × 150 GHz , and 150 GHz × 150 GHz . B -mode power is detected at very high significance; we find P ( B B < 0 ) = 5.8 × 10−71, corresponding to a 18.1σ detection of power. With a prior on the galactic dust from Planck, WMAP and BICEP2/Keck observations, the SPTpol B-mode data can be used to set an upper limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, r < 0.44 at 95% confidence (the expected 1σ constraint on r given the measurement uncertainties is 0.22). We find the measured B-mode power is consistent with the Planck best-fit Λ CDM model predictions. Scaling the predicted lensing B-mode power in this model by a factor Alens, the data prefer Alens = 1.17 ± 0.13 . These data are currently the most precise measurements of B-mode power at ℓ > 320.
Abstract
We report new measurements of millimeter-wave power spectra in the angular multipole range 2000 ≤
ℓ
≤ 11,000 (angular scales
). By adding 95 and 150 GHz data from the low-noise 500 deg
2
...SPTpol survey to the SPT-SZ three-frequency 2540 deg
2
survey, we substantially reduce the uncertainties in these bands. These power spectra include contributions from the primary cosmic microwave background, cosmic infrared background, radio galaxies, and thermal and kinematic Sunyaev–Zel’dovich (SZ) effects. The data favor a thermal SZ (tSZ) power at 143 GHz of
and a kinematic SZ (kSZ) power of
. This is the first measurement of kSZ power at ≥3
σ
. However, different assumptions about the CIB or SZ models can reduce the significance down to 2.4
σ
in the worst case. We study the implications of the measured kSZ power for the epoch of reionization under the Calabrese et al. model for the kSZ power spectrum and find the duration of reionization to be
(
at 95% confidence), when combined with our previously published tSZ bispectrum measurement. The upper limit tightens to
if the assumed homogeneous kSZ power is increased by 25% (∼0.5
μ
K
2
) and relaxes to
if the homogeneous kSZ power is decreased by the same amount.
Gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background generates a curl pattern in the observed polarization. This "B-mode" signal provides a measure of the projected mass distribution over the ...entire observable Universe and also acts as a contaminant for the measurement of primordial gravity-wave signals. In this Letter we present the first detection of gravitational lensing B modes, using first-season data from the polarization-sensitive receiver on the South Pole Telescope (SPTpol). We construct a template for the lensing B-mode signal by combining E-mode polarization measured by SPTpol with estimates of the lensing potential from a Herschel-SPIRE map of the cosmic infrared background. We compare this template to the B modes measured directly by SPTpol, finding a nonzero correlation at 7.7σ significance. The correlation has an amplitude and scale dependence consistent with theoretical expectations, is robust with respect to analysis choices, and constitutes the first measurement of a powerful cosmological observable.
We present a catalog of galaxy cluster candidates detected in 100 square degrees surveyed with the SPTpol receiver on the South Pole Telescope. The catalog contains 89 candidates detected with a ...signal-to-noise ratio greater than 4.6. The candidates are selected using the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect at 95 and 150 GHz. Using both space- and ground-based optical and infrared telescopes, we have confirmed 81 candidates as galaxy clusters. We use these follow-up images and archival images to estimate photometric redshifts for 66 galaxy clusters and spectroscopic observations to obtain redshifts for 13 systems. An additional two galaxy clusters are confirmed using the overdensity of near-infrared galaxies only and are presented without redshifts. We find that 15 candidates (18% of the total sample) are at redshift z ≥ 1.0, with a maximum confirmed redshift of . We expect this catalog to contain every galaxy cluster with and z > 0.25 in the survey area. The mass threshold is approximately constant above z = 0.25, and the complete catalog has a median mass of approximately . Compared to previous SPT works, the increased depth of the millimeter-wave data (11.2 and 6.5 K-arcmin at 95 and 150 GHz, respectively) makes it possible to find more galaxy clusters at high redshift and lower mass.
We present a measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature power spectrum using data from the recently completed South Pole Telescope Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SPT-SZ) survey. We report ...CMB temperature anisotropy power over the multipole range 650 < l < 3000. We fit the SPT bandpowers, combined with the 7 yr Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP7) data, with a six-parameter ACDM cosmological model and find that the two datasets are consistent and well fit by the model. Adding SPT measurements significantly improves ACDM parameter constraints; in particular, the constraint on theta sub(s) tightens by a factor of 2.7. The impact of gravitational lensing is detected at 8.1sigma, the most significant detection to date. These new constraints on n sub(s) and r have significant implications for our understanding of inflation, which we discuss in the context of selected single-field inflation models.
ABSTRACT We present a measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) gravitational lensing potential using data from the first two seasons of observations with SPTpol, the ...polarization-sensitive receiver currently installed on the South Pole Telescope. The observations used in this work cover 100 deg2 of sky with arcminute resolution at 150 GHz. Using a quadratic estimator, we make maps of the CMB lensing potential from combinations of CMB temperature and polarization maps. We combine these lensing potential maps to form a minimum-variance (MV) map. The lensing potential is measured with a signal-to-noise ratio of greater than one for angular multipoles between . This is the highest signal-to-noise mass map made from the CMB to date and will be powerful in cross-correlation with other tracers of large-scale structure. We calculate the power spectrum of the lensing potential for each estimator, and we report the value of the MV power spectrum between as our primary result. We constrain the ratio of the spectrum to a fiducial ΛCDM model to be AMV = 0.92 0.14 (Stat.) 0.08 (Sys.). Restricting ourselves to polarized data only, we find APOL = 0.92 0.24 (Stat.) 0.11 (Sys.). This measurement rejects the hypothesis of no lensing at using polarization data alone, and at using both temperature and polarization data.
We present first results on the cooling properties derived from Chandra X-ray observations of 83 high-redshift (0.3 < z < 1.2) massive galaxy clusters selected by their Sunyaev-Zel'dovich signature ...in the South Pole Telescope data. We measure each cluster's central cooling time, central entropy, and mass deposition rate, and compare these properties to those for local cluster samples. We find no significant evolution from z ~ 0 to z ~ 1 in the distribution of these properties, suggesting that cooling in cluster cores is stable over long periods of time. We also find that the average cool core entropy profile in the inner ~100 kpc has not changed dramatically since z ~ 1, implying that feedback must be providing nearly constant energy injection to maintain the observed "entropy floor" at ~10 keV cm super(2). While the cooling properties appear roughly constant over long periods of time, we observe strong evolution in the gas density profile, with the normalized central density (rhog, 0/rho sub(crit)) increasing by an order of magnitude from z ~ 1 to z ~ 0. When using metrics defined by the inner surface brightness profile of clusters, we find an apparent lack of classical, cuspy, cool-core clusters at z > 0.75, consistent with earlier reports for clusters at z > 0.5 using similar definitions. Our measurements indicate that cool cores have been steadily growing over the 8 Gyr spanned by our sample, consistent with a constant, ~150 M sub(middot in circle) yr super(-1) cooling flow that is unable to cool below entropies of 10 keV cm super(2) and, instead, accumulates in the cluster center. We estimate that cool cores began to assemble in these massive systems at z sub(cool) = 1.0 super(+1.0) sub(-0.2), which represents the first constraints on the onset of cooling in galaxy cluster cores. At high redshift (z > ~ 0.75), galaxy clusters may be classified as "cooling flows" (low central entropy, cooling time) but not "cool cores" (cuspy surface brightness profile), meaning that care must be taken when classifying these high-z systems. We investigate several potential biases that could conspire to mimic this cool core evolution and are unable to find a bias that has a similar redshift dependence and a substantial amplitude.
ABSTRACT The millimeter transient sky is largely unexplored, with measurements limited to follow-up of objects detected at other wavelengths. High-angular-resolution telescopes, designed for ...measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), offer the possibility to discover new, unknown transient sources in this band-particularly the afterglows of unobserved gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Here, we use the 10 m millimeter-wave South Pole Telescope, designed for the primary purpose of observing the CMB at arcminute and larger angular scales, to conduct a search for such objects. During the 2012-2013 season, the telescope was used to continuously observe a 100 deg2 patch of sky centered at R.A. 23h30m and decl. −55° using the polarization-sensitive SPTpol camera in two bands centered at 95 and 150 GHz. These 6000 hr of observations provided continuous monitoring for day- to month-scale millimeter-wave transient sources at the 10 mJy level. One candidate object was observed with properties broadly consistent with a GRB afterglow, but at a statistical significance too low (p = 0.01) to confirm detection.
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