Analysis and modelling of polarized sky emission in WMAP and Planck data sets

In 2015, the Planck collaboration has published the results of the measurement of the temperature and polarisation angular power spectra of CMB anisotropies, constraining with unprecedented accuracy the six major cosmological parameters necessary to fit the data.

At present, the CMB community is getting focussed on detecting the CMB polarisation B-modes that would yield a measurement of primordial tensor perturbations and strongly constrain inflationary models. In 2014, the BICEP2 experiment announced a detection of these polarisation B-modes, but the analysis of Planck data sets has shown that the detected signal could be entirely explained by polarised emission of dust particles in our own Galaxy.

The proposed research topic will consist in analysing further and model the polarised sky emission seen by WMAP and Planck, to refine our understanding of those emissions as a function of frequency and of the direction of observation, and to evaluate the uncertainties of the proposed model.

This work will be part of the development of the “Planck Sky Model” and of the preparation of future observations of cosmic microwave background polarisation.

The training research internship will be carried-out at the APC laboratory under the supervision of Jacques Delabrouille

Contact: Jacques Delabrouille  delabrouilleapc.univ-paris7.fr