Degree Angular Scale Interferometer First Results: A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Angular Power Spectrum

TLDR

The paper presents first‑season measurements of CMB anisotropy with the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer and reviews the analysis formalism, including constraint matrices to remove contaminants. DASI was deployed at the South Pole during the 1999–2000 austral summer and observed through the following winter, employing constraint matrices to project out ground and point‑source signals and test for diffuse foreground correlations. The resulting CMB angular power spectrum (100 < ℓ < 900) has 10–20 % fractional uncertainties, shows no foregrounds beyond point sources, yields a temperature spectral index β = –0.1 ± 0.2, and reveals peaks at ℓ ≈ 200, 550, and 800 consistent with adiabatic inflationary predictions.

Abstract

We present measurements of anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from the first season of observations with the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer (DASI). The instrument was deployed at the South Pole in the austral summer 1999-2000, and we made observations throughout the following austral winter. We present a measurement of the CMB angular power spectrum in the range 100 < l < 900 in nine bands with fractional uncertainties in the range 10%-20% and dominated by sample variance. In this paper, we review the formalism used in the analysis, in particular the use of constraint matrices to project out contaminants such as ground and point source signals and to test for correlations with diffuse foreground templates. We find no evidence of foregrounds other than point sources in the data, and we find a maximum likelihood temperature spectral index β = -0.1 ± 0.2 (1 σ), consistent with CMB. We detect a first peak in the power spectrum at l ~ 200, in agreement with previous experiments. In addition, we detect a peak in the power spectrum at l ~ 550 and power of similar magnitude at l ~ 800, which are consistent with the second and third harmonic peaks predicted by adiabatic inflationary cosmological models.