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Paper: Measuring the Diffuse Polarized Foreground of the ELAIS-N1 Deep Field
Volume: 438, The Dynamic Interstellar Medium: A Celebration of the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey
Page: 303
Authors: Baran, A.; Fiege, J.; Taylor, A. R.; Foster, T.; Landecker, T. L.
Abstract: The ELAIS N-1 deep field is a low column density window into the extragalactic universe. The diffuse Galactic foreground of this window must be understood in order to measure anisotropies in the Cosmic Background Radiation Field—a principal goal of the Planck science mission. The Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO) Synthesis Telescope is being used to distinguish low-level signal from noise in order to map the Galactic foreground and improve the accuracy of Planck CMB measurements. This is accomplished by modeling the system temperature noise for the Synthesis Telescope in order to create a noise map, which allows positive detection of the low-level polarization features that exist in the field. This difficult non-linear optimization problem does not lend itself well to standard local optimization techniques. We have developed software, based on an advanced genetic algorithm and a particle swarm optimizer, to characterize the spatial distribution of noise power in synthesis telescope mosaic images. Power spectra of the diffuse polarized foreground of ELAIS N-1 are presented.
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