N. Vittorio

A Flat Universe from High-Resolution Maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

The blackbody radiation left over from the Big Bang has been transformed by the expansion of the Universe into the nearly isotropic 2.73u2009K cosmic microwave background. Tiny inhomogeneities in the early Universe left their imprint on the microwave background in the form of small anisotropies in its temperature. These anisotropies contain information about basic cosmological parameters, particularly the total energy density and curvature of the Universe. Here we report the first images of resolved structure in the microwave background anisotropies over a significant part of the sky. Maps at four frequencies clearly distinguish the microwave background from foreground emission. We compute the angular power spectrum of the microwave background, and find a peak at Legendre multipole lpeak = (197 ± 6), with an amplitude ΔT200 = (69 ± 8)u2009µK. This is consistent with that expected for cold dark matter models in a flat (euclidean) Universe, as favoured by standard inflationary models.

A measurement of Ω from the North American test flight of Boomerang

We use the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background, measured during the North American test flight of the Boomerang experiment, to constrain the geometry of the universe. Within the class of cold dark matter models, we find that the overall fractional energy density of the universe Omega is constrained to be 0.85</=Omega</=1.25 at the 68% confidence level. Combined with the COBE measurement, the data on degree scales from the Microwave Anisotropy Telescope in Chile, and the high-redshift supernovae data, we obtain new constraints on the fractional matter density and the cosmological constant.

Measuring CMB polarization with Boomerang

Boomerang is a balloon-borne telescope designed for long duration (LDB) flights around Antarctica. The second LDB flight of Boomerang took place in January 2003. The primary goal of this flight was to measure the polarization of the CMB. The receiver uses polarization sensitive bolometers at 145 GHz. Polarizing grids provide polarization sensitivity at 245 and 345 GHz. We describe the Boomerang telescope noting changes made for 2003 LDB flight, and discuss some of the issues involved in the measurement of polarization with bolometers. Lastly, we report on the 2003 flight and provide an estimate of the expected results.

SUBDEGREE SUNYAEV-ZEL'DOVICH SIGNAL FROM MULTIFREQUENCY BOOMERANG OBSERVATIONS

The Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect is the inverse Compton-scattering of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons by hot electrons in the intervening gas throughout the universe. The effect has a distinct spectral signature that allows its separation from other signals in multifrequency CMB data sets. Using CMB anisotropies measured at three frequencies by the BOOMERANG 2003 flight we constrain SZ fluctuations in the 10 arcmin to 1 deg angular range. Propagating errors and potential systematic effects through simulations, we obtain an overall upper limit of 15.3 μK (2σ) for rms SZ fluctuations in a broad bin between multipoles of 250 and 1200 at the Rayleigh-Jeans (RJ) end of the spectrum. The resulting upper limit on the local universe normalization of the density perturbations with BOOMERANG SZ data alone is σSZ 8 < 1.14 at the 95% confidence level. When combined with other CMB anisotropy and SZ measurements, we find σSZ 8 < 0.92 (95% c.l.).

The new images of the microwave sky: a concordance cosmology ?

The existence and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the large scale distribution of Galaxies, the expansion of the Universe and the abundance of light elements can be all be explained with a single cosmological model. In this paper we focus on the CMB anisotropy maps produced by the BOOMERanG experiment and on their impact on cosmology. The images are consistent with the result of acoustic oscillations of the photons-matter plasma in the pre-recombination Universe (z ≳ 1000). We show how the instrument and the observations have been optimized and how the basic parameters of the model are derived from the data. These observations of the CMB are gaussian and point to a low curvature Universe (ω ∼ 1), as expected in the inflation scenario. In order to fit these observations and other cosmological evidence, the composition of the Universe must have significant contributions from dark matter (ω m ∼ 0.3) and dark energy (ωΛ ∼ 0.7).