Publication: Can Weak Lensing Surveys Confirm BICEP2?
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Date
2014
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American Physical Society (APS)
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Chisari, Nora Elisa, Cora Dvorkin, and Fabian Schmidt. 2014. Can Weak Lensing Surveys Confirm BICEP2? Physical Rev. D 90, no. 4 (August): 043527.
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Abstract
The detection of B-modes in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization by the BICEP2 experiment, if interpreted as evidence for a primordial gravitational wave background, has enormous ramifications for cosmology and physics. It is crucial to test this hypothesis with independent measurements. A gravitational wave background leads to B-modes in galaxy shape correlations (shear) both through lensing and tidal alignment effects. Since the systematics and foregrounds of galaxy shapes and CMB polarization are entirely different, a detection of a cross correlation between the two observables would provide conclusive proof for the existence of a primordial gravitational wave background. We find that upcoming weak lensing surveys will be able to detect the cross correlation between B-modes of the CMB and galaxy shapes. However, this detection is not sufficient to confirm or falsify the hypothesis of a primordial origin for CMB B-mode polarization.
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Keywords
correlation, cosmological model, BICEP, lens, galaxy, effect: alignment, cosmic background radiation: polarization, gravitational radiation: primordial, cosmic background radiation: B-mode, gravitational radiation: background
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