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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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