Microwave spectro-polarimetry of matter and radiation across space and time

Jacques Delabrouille (1, 2) , Maximilian H. Abitbol (3) , Nabila Aghanim (4) , Yacine Ali-Haïmoud (5, 3) , David Alonso (3, 6) , Marcelo Alvarez (7) , Anthony J. Banday (8) , James G. Bartlett (1) , Jochem Baselmans (9, 10) , Kaustuv Basu (11) , Nicholas Battaglia (12) , José Ramón Bermejo Climent (13) , José L. Bernal (14) , Matthieu Béthermin (15) , Boris Bolliet (16) , Matteo Bonato (17) , François R. Bouchet (18) , Patrick C. Breysse (19) , Carlo Burigana (17) , Zhen-Yi Cai (20) , Jens Chluba (16) , Eugene Churazov (21) , Helmut Dannerbauer (22) , Paolo de Bernardis (23) , Gianfranco de Zotti (17) , Eleonora Di Valentino (16) , Emanuela Dimastrogiovanni (24) , Akira Endo (25) , Jens Erler (26) , Simone Ferraro (27) , Fabio Finelli (17) , Dale Fixsen (28) , Shaul Hanany (29) , Luke Hart (16) , Carlos Hernández-Monteagudo , J. Colin Hill (30) , Selim C. Hotinli (31) , Kenichi Karatsu (25) , Kirit Karkare (32) , Garrett K. Keating (33) , Ildar Khabibullin (21) , Alan Kogut (34) , Kazunori Kohri (35) , Ely D. Kovetz (36) , Guilaine Lagache (15) , Julien Lesgourgues (37) , Mathew Madhavacheril (38) , Bruno Maffei (4) , Nazzareno Mandolesi (39, 17) , Carlos Martins (40, 41) , Silvia Masi (23) , John Mather (34) , Jean-Baptiste Melin (2) , Azadeh Moradinezhad Dizgah (42) , Tony Mroczkowski (43) , Suvodip Mukherjee (18) , Daisuke Nagai (44) , Mattia Negrello (45) , Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille (2) , Daniela Paoletti (17) , Subodh P. Patil (46) , Francesco Piacentini (23) , Srinivasan Raghunathan (47) , Andrea Ravenni (16) , Mathieu Remazeilles (16) , Vincent Revéret (2) , Louis Rodriguez (2) , Aditya Rotti (16) , Jose-Alberto Rubiño Martin (22) , Jack Sayers (48) , Douglas Scott (49) , Joseph Silk (18, 50, 51) , Marta Silva (52) , Tarun Souradeep (53) , Naonori Sugiyama (54) , Rashid Sunyaev (21) , Eric R. Switzer (34) , Andrea Tartari (55) , Tiziana Trombetti (17) , Iñigo Zubeldia (56)

1 APC (UMR_7164) - AstroParticule et Cosmologie
2 IRFU - Institut de Recherches sur les lois Fondamentales de l'Univers
3 University of Oxford
4 IAS - Institut d'astrophysique spatiale
5 Department of Physics [New York]
6 Cardiff University
7 LBNL - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory [Berkeley]
8 IRAP - Institut de recherche en astrophysique et planétologie
9 TU Delft - Delft University of Technology
10 SRON - SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research
11 Universität Bonn = University of Bonn
12 CU - Cornell University [Ithaca]
13 OABO - INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna
14 University of Barcelona
15 LAM - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille
16 JBCA - Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics
17 INAF - Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica
18 IAP - Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
19 CITA - Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics
20 USTC - University of Science and Technology of China [Hefei]
21 MPA - Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik
22 IAC - Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias
23 Dipartimento di Fisica [Roma La Sapienza]
24 UNSW - University of New South Wales [Sydney]
25 Department of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science [Delft]
26 AlfA - Argelander-Institut für Astronomie
27 UC Berkeley - University of California [Berkeley]
28 University of Maryland [College Park]
29 UMN - University of Minnesota [Twin Cities]
30 Flatiron Institute
31 Blackett Laboratory
32 KICP - Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics [Chicago]
33 CfA - Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
34 GSFC - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
35 Kavli IPMU - Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe [Tokyo]
36 BGU - Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
37 TTK - Institut für Theoretische Teilchenphysik und Kosmologie
38 Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics [Waterloo]
39 UniFE - Università degli Studi di Ferrara = University of Ferrara
40 CAUP - Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto
41 IASTRO - Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço
42 Physics Department [Genève]
43 ESO - European Southern Observatory
44 Yale University [New Haven]
45 School of Physics and Astronomy [Cardiff]
46 NBI - Niels Bohr Institute [Copenhagen]
47 Physics - UC Davis - Department of Physics and Astronomy [Univ California Davis]
48 CALTECH - California Institute of Technology
49 University of British Columbia [Vancouver]
50 JHU - Johns Hopkins University
51 BIPAC - Beecroft Institute of Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
52 Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics [Oslo]
53 IISER Pune - Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune
54 NAOJ - National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
55 INFN - Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare [Pisa]
56 Institute of Astronomy [Cambridge]

This paper discusses the science case for a sensitive spectro-polarimetric survey of the microwave sky. Such a survey would provide a tomographic and dynamic census of the three-dimensional distribution of hot gas, velocity flows, early metals, dust, and mass distribution in the entire Hubble volume, exploit CMB temperature and polarisation anisotropies down to fundamental limits, and track energy injection and absorption into the radiation background across cosmic times by measuring spectral distortions of the CMB blackbody emission. In addition to its exceptional capability for cosmology and fundamental physics, such a survey would provide an unprecedented view of microwave emissions at sub-arcminute to few-arcminute angular resolution in hundreds of frequency channels, a data set that would be of immense legacy value for many branches of astrophysics. We propose that this survey be carried out with a large space mission featuring a broad-band polarised imager and a moderate resolution spectro-imager at the focus of a 3.5 m aperture telescope actively cooled to about 8K, complemented with absolutely-calibrated Fourier Transform Spectrometer modules observing at degree-scale angular resolution in the 10–2000 GHz frequency range. We propose two observing modes: a survey mode to map the entire sky as well as a few selected wide fields, and an observatory mode for deeper observations of regions of specific interest.

Mots clés: Cosmology; Early Universe; Galaxies; Galaxy clusters

Domaines: Astrophysique [astro-ph]; Relativité Générale et Cosmologie Quantique [gr-qc]; Instrumentations et Détecteurs [physics.ins-det]

Jacques Delabrouille, Maximilian H. Abitbol, Nabila Aghanim, Yacine Ali-Haïmoud, David Alonso, et al.. Microwave spectro-polarimetry of matter and radiation across space and time. Experimental Astronomy, 2021, 51 (3), pp.1471-1514. ⟨10.1007/s10686-021-09721-z⟩. ⟨hal-02309036⟩