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Originally published in Science Express on 7 October 2004
Science 29 October 2004:
Vol. 306. no. 5697, pp. 836 - 844
DOI: 10.1126/science.1105598
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Research Articles

Polarization Observations with the Cosmic Background Imager

A. C. S. Readhead,1* S. T. Myers,2 T. J. Pearson,1 J. L. Sievers,1,3 B. S. Mason,4 C. R. Contaldi,3 J. R. Bond,3 R. Bustos,5 P. Altamirano,6 C. Achermann,6 L. Bronfman,6 J. E. Carlstrom,7 J. K. Cartwright,1,7 S. Casassus,6 C. Dickinson,1 W. L. Holzapfel,8 J. M. Kovac,1,7 E. M. Leitch,7 J. May,6 S. Padin,1,7 D. Pogosyan,3,9 M. Pospieszalski,10 C. Pryke,7 R. Reeves,5 M. C. Shepherd,1 S. Torres5

Polarization observations of the cosmic microwave background with the Cosmic Background Imager from September 2002 to May 2004 provide a significant detection of the E-mode polarization and reveal an angular power spectrum of polarized emission showing peaks and valleys that are shifted in phase by half a cycle relative to those of the total intensity spectrum. This key agreement between the phase of the observed polarization spectrum and that predicted on the basis of the total intensity spectrum provides support for the standard model of cosmology, in which dark matter and dark energy are the dominant constituents, the geometry is close to flat, and primordial density fluctuations are predominantly adiabatic with a matter power spectrum commensurate with inflationary cosmological models.

1 Owens Valley Radio Observatory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
2 National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), Post Office Box O, Socorro, NM 87801, USA.
3 Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA), University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, M5S3H8, Canada.
4 NRAO, Post Office Box 2, Green Bank, WV 24944, USA.
5 Departamento de Ingeniería Eléctrica, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile.
6 Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
7 Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
8 Department of Physics, 361 LeConte Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720–7300, USA.
9 Department of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G2J1 Canada.
10 NRAO, 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: acr{at}astro.caltech.edu

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)