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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Moving lens effect: Simulations, forecasts, and foreground mitigation

The peculiar motion of massive objects across the line of sight imprints a dipolar temperature anisotropy pattern on the cosmic microwave background known as the moving lens effect. This effect provides a unique probe of the transverse components of the peculiar velocity field, but has not yet been detected due to its small size. We implement and validate a stacking estimator for the moving lens signal using a galaxy catalog as a tracer of massive haloes combined with reconstructed velocities from the galaxy number density field. Using simulations, we forecast detection prospects for the moving lens signal from current and upcoming microwave background and galaxy surveys. Here, we demonstrate a new foreground mitigation strategy likely sufficient for current datasets, and discuss various sources of systematic error and noise. Upcoming galaxy surveys will provide high-significance statistical detections of the moving lens effect.

Astrophysical & cosmological simulations↗
DOE OSTI2023

Entanglement masquerading in the CMB

The simplest single-field inflation models capture all the relevant contributions to the patterns in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observed today. A key assumption in these models is that the quantum inflationary fluctuations that source such patterns are generated by a particular quantum state — the Bunch-Davies (BD) state. While this is a well-motivated choice from a theoretical perspective, the question arises of whether current data can rule out other, also well motivated, choices of states. In particular, as we previously demonstrated in [1], entanglement is naturally and inevitably dynamically generated during inflation given the presence of a "rolling" spectator scalar field — and the resulting entangled state will yield a primordial power spectrum with potentially measurable deviations compared to the canonical BD result. For this work we developed a perturbative framework to allow a systematic exploration of constraints on (or detection of) entangled states with Planck CMB data using Monte Carlo techniques. We have found that most entangled states accessible with our framework are consistent with the data. One would have to expand the framework to allow a greater variety of entangled states in order to saturate the Planck constraints and more systematically explore any preferences the data may have among the different possibilities.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Transitioning from Stage-III to Stage-IV: cosmology from galaxy×CMB lensing and shear×CMB lensing

ABSTRACT We examine the cosmological constraining power from two cross-correlation probes between galaxy and cosmic microwave background (CMB) surveys: the cross-correlation of lens galaxy density with CMB lensing convergence 〈δgκCMB〉, and source galaxy weak lensing shear with CMB lensing convergence 〈γκCMB〉. These two cross-correlation probes provide an independent cross-check of other large-scale structure constraints and are insensitive to galaxy-only or CMB-only systematic effects. In addition, when combined with other large-scale structure probes, the cross-correlations can break degeneracies in cosmological and nuisance parameters, improving both the precision and robustness of the analysis. In this work, we study how the constraining power of 〈δgκCMB〉 + 〈γκCMB〉 changes from Stage-III (ongoing) to Stage-IV (future) surveys. Given the flexibility in selecting the lens galaxy sample, we also explore systematically the impact on cosmological constraints when we vary the redshift range and magnitude limit of the lens galaxies using mock galaxy catalogs. We find that in our setup, the contribution to cosmological constraints from 〈δgκCMB〉 and 〈γκCMB〉 are comparable in the Stage-III data sets; but in Stage-IV surveys, the noise in 〈δgκCMB〉 becomes subdominant to cosmic variance, preventing 〈δgκCMB〉 to further improve the constraints. This implies that to maximize the cosmological constraints from future 〈δgκCMB〉 + 〈γκCMB〉 analyses, we should focus more on the requirements on 〈γκCMB〉 instead of 〈δgκCMB〉. Furthermore, the selection of the lens sample should be optimized in terms of our ability to characterize its redshift or galaxy bias instead of its number density.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Measurement of Dielectric Loss in Silicon Nitride at Centimeter and Millimeter Wavelengths

This work presents a suite of measurement techniques for characterizing the dielectric loss tangent across a wide frequency range from similar to 1 GHz to 150 GHz using the same test chip. In the first method, we fit data from a microwave resonator at different temperatures to a model that captures the two-level system (TLS) response to extract and characterize both the real and imaginary components of the dielectric loss. The inverse of the internal quality factor is a second measure of the overall loss of the resonator, where TLS loss through the dielectric material is typically the dominant source. The third technique is a differential optical measurement at 150 GHz. The same antenna feeds two microstrip lines with different lengths that terminate in two microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs). The difference in the detector response is used to estimate the loss per unit length of the microstrip line. Our results suggest a larger loss for SiNx at 150 GHz of tan delta similar to 4 x 10(-3) compared to 2.0 x 10(-3) and greater than or similar to 1 x 10(-3) measured at similar to 1 GHz using the other two methods. These measurement techniques can be applied to other dielectrics by adjusting the microstrip lengths to provide enough optical efficiency contrast and other mm/sub-mm frequency ranges by tuning the antenna and feedhorn accordingly.

Dielectrics loss↗
DOE OSTI2022

Searching for axionlike time-dependent cosmic birefringence with data from SPT-3G

Ultralight axionlike particles (ALPs) are compelling dark matter candidates because of their potential to resolve small-scale discrepancies between Λ CDM predictions and cosmological observations. Axion-photon coupling induces a polarization rotation in linearly polarized photons traveling through an ALP field; thus, as the local ALP dark matter field oscillates in time, distant static polarized sources will appear to oscillate with a frequency proportional to the ALP mass. We use observations of the cosmic microwave background from SPT-3G, the current receiver on the South Pole Telescope, to set upper limits on the value of the axion-photon coupling constant g φ γ over the approximate mass range 10 - 22 – 10 - 19 eV , corresponding to oscillation periods from 12 hours to 100 days. For periods between 1 and 100 days ( 4.7 × 10 - 22 eV ≤ m φ ≤ 4.7 × 10 - 20 eV ), where the limit is approximately constant, we set a median 95% C.L. upper limit on the amplitude of on-sky polarization rotation of 0.071 deg. Assuming that dark matter comprises a single ALP species with a local dark matter density of 0.3 GeV / cm 3 , this corresponds to g φ γ < 1.18 × 10 - 12 GeV - 1 × ( m φ 1.0 × 10 - 21 eV ) . These new limits represent an improvement over the previous strongest limits set using the same effect by a factor of ~ 3.8 .

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2024

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Mitigating the Impact of Extragalactic Foregrounds for the DR6 Cosmic Microwave Background Lensing Analysis

We investigate the impact and mitigation of extragalactic foregrounds for the cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing power spectrum analysis of Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) data release 6 (DR6) data. Two independent microwave sky simulations are used to test a range of mitigation strategies. We demonstrate that finding and then subtracting point sources, finding and then subtracting models of clusters, and using a profile bias-hardened lensing estimator together reduce the fractional biases to well below statistical uncertainties, with the inferred lensing amplitude, A lens , biased by less than 0.2σ. We also show that another method where a model for the cosmic infrared background (CIB) contribution is deprojected and high-frequency data from Planck is included has similar performance. Other frequency-cleaned options do not perform as well, either incurring a large noise cost or resulting in biased recovery of the lensing spectrum. In addition to these simulation-based tests, we also present null tests on the ACT DR6 data for sensitivity of our lensing spectrum estimation to differences in foreground levels between the two ACT frequencies used, while nulling the CMB lensing signal. These tests pass whether the nulling is performed at the map or bandpower level. The CIB-deprojected measurement performed on the DR6 data is consistent with our baseline measurement, implying that contamination from the CIB is unlikely to significantly bias the DR6 lensing spectrum. This collection of tests gives confidence that the ACT DR6 lensing measurements and cosmological constraints presented in companion papers to this work are robust to extragalactic foregrounds.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Inpainting Galactic Foreground Intensity and Polarization Maps Using Convolutional Neural Networks

The Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNNs) have been a popular tool for image generation and restoration. In this work, we applied DCNNs to the problem of inpainting non-Gaussian astrophysical signal, in the context of Galactic diffuse emissions at the millimetric and submillimetric regimes, specifically Synchrotron and Thermal Dust emissions. Both signals are affected by contamination at small angular scales due to extragalactic radio sources (the former) and dusty star-forming galaxies (the latter). Furthermore, we compare the performance of the standard diffusive inpainting with that of two novel methodologies relying on DCNNs, namely Generative Adversarial Networks and Deep-Prior. We show that the methods based on the DCNNs are able to reproduce the statistical properties of the ground-truth signal more consistently with a higher confidence level.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Measurement of the energy distribution of electrons escaping confinement from an electron cyclotron resonance ion source

Production of high charge state ions in electron cyclotron resonance ion sources (ECRISs) is dependent on the electron energy distribution (EED) within the source plasma. In order to better understand the EED, a measurement of electrons escaping axially from an ECRIS device has been performed at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. Electrons were measured escaping from the Superconducting Source for Ions, driven at 18 GHz. Dependencies of the observed EED on the confining magnetic field strength and injected microwave power are reported. This paper focuses on large peaks of electrons in the 400–1200 keV energy range. Measurements of the axial bremsstrahlung spectrum have been simultaneously carried out to provide a direct comparison between both techniques. A comparison between the energy associated with the peak of the electron distribution and the spectral temperature of the bremsstrahlung distribution is shown.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Non-Gaussianity constraints with anisotropic μ distortion measurements from Planck

ABSTRACT Primordial non-Gaussianity can source μ-distortion anisotropies that are correlated with the large-scale temperature and polarization signals of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). A measurement of μT and μE correlations can therefore be used to constrain it on wavelengths of perturbations not directly probed by the standard CMB anisotropies. We carry out a first rigorous search for μ-distortion anisotropies with Planck data, applying the well-tested constrained ILC component-separation method combined with the needlet framework. We correlate the reconstructed μ map with the CMB anisotropies to derive constraints on the amplitude fNL of the local form bispectrum, specifically on the squeezed configurations with effective wavenumbers $k_s \simeq {740}\, \mathrm{Mpc^{-1}}$ and $k_L \simeq {0.05}\, \mathrm{Mpc^{-1}}$, improving previously estimated constraints by more than an order of magnitude. This enhancement is owing to the fact that we are able to use the full multipole information by carefully controlling biases and systematic effects in the analysis. We also for the first time incorporate constraints from measurements of μE correlations, which further tighten the limits. A combination of the derived Planck μT and μE power spectra yields |fNL| ≲ 6800 (95 per cent c.l.) on this highly squeezed bispectrum. This is only ≃3 times weaker than the anticipated constraint from Litebird. Furthermore we show that a combination of Litebird with Planck can improve the expected future constraint by ${\simeq}20{{\%}}$. These limits can be used to constrain multifield inflation models and primordial black hole formation scenarios, thus providing a promising novel avenue forward in CMB cosmology.

Rotti, Aditya (ORCID:0000000341245226)↗
DOE OSTI2021

First Soft X-ray Quantum Efficiency Measurements on Microwave Annealed Thin-Entrance Window Sensors

Free electron lasers, such as SLAC’s LCLS-II, will provide unique scientific imaging opportunities. In order to fully utilize these facilities, we need to develop detectors with shallow entrance windows that will enable detection of soft x-rays from 250eV-1.5KeV. In addition, there are other light sources such as the FERMI, EuXFEL, and FLASH XFELs, as well as numerous synchrotrons such as the ALS, where soft x-ray science would benefit from detectors with higher quantum efficiency in the 20 eV to 1.5KeV range.A new microwave annealing technology provides an efficient way to achieve shallow entrance windows in fully depleted high-resistivity silicon sensors. Previously, SRP and SIMS measurements were used to characterize the shallow dopant profile, and sensors with the new entrance window process were deployed successfully to measure an Fe-55 x-ray spectrum. For the first time, we present quantum efficiency measurement for soft x-rays. Furthermore, the resulting estimate of the entrance window is 20nm for an arsenic implanted entrance window and 55nm for a boron implanted entrance window.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2023

Outgassing behavior and heat treatment optimization of JSC-1A lunar regolith simulant

As NASA strives towards a long duration presence on the Moon, it has become increasingly important to learn how to better utilize resources from the lunar surface for everything from habitats, vehicle infrastructure, and chemical extraction. To that end, a variety of lunar simulants have been sourced from terrestrially available volcanic minerals and glass as Apollo regolith is unavailable for experimentation needing large masses. However, while mineralogy and chemical composition can approach that of lunar material in these simulants, there are still distinct non-lunar phases such as hydrates, carbonates, sulfates, and clays that can cause simulants to behave distinctly non-lunar in a variety of processing conditions that maybe applied in-situ to lunar material. Notably, severe glassy bubbling has been documented in a variety of vacuum sintering experiments on JSC-1A lunar mare simulant heated via microwaves. The origins of this outgassing have not been well understood but are normally attributed to the decomposition of non-lunar contaminates intrinsic to virtually all terrestrially sourced simulants. As such, a series of controlled environmental tests were performed to ascertain the origins of the high temperature outgassing and to develop heat treatments that can drive JSC-1A closer to lunar composition and behavior. It was found that in JSC-1A at elevated temperatures distinct gas evolutions of water, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide occur in both inert gas and vacuum. Additionally, the presence of hydrogen during heat treatments was shown to dramatically change gas evolutions, leading to distinctly more lunar-like composition and behavior from JSC-1A simulant.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Strong detection of the CMB lensing and galaxy weak lensing cross-correlation from ACT-DR4, Planck Legacy, and KiDS-1000

Here we measured the cross-correlation between galaxy weak lensing data from the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS-1000, DR4) and cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT, DR4) and the Planck Legacy survey. We used two samples of source galaxies, selected with photometric redshifts, (0.1 < z B < 1.2) and (1.2 < z B < 2), which produce a combined detection significance of the CMB lensing and weak galaxy lensing cross-spectrum of 7.7σ. With the lower redshift galaxy sample, for which the cross-correlation was detected at a significance of 5.3σ, we present joint cosmological constraints on the matter density parameter, Ω m , and the matter fluctuation amplitude parameter, σ 8 , marginalising over three nuisance parameters that model our uncertainty in the redshift and shear calibration as well as the intrinsic alignment of galaxies. We find our measurement to be consistent with the best-fitting flat ΛCDM cosmological models from both Planck and KiDS-1000. We demonstrate the capacity of CMB weak lensing cross-correlations to set constraints on either the redshift or shear calibration by analysing a previously unused high-redshift KiDS galaxy sample (1.2 < z B < 2), with the cross-correlation detected at a significance of 7σ. This analysis provides an independent assessment for the accuracy of redshift measurements in a regime that is challenging to calibrate directly owing to known incompleteness in spectroscopic surveys.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Observable CMB B -modes from cosmological phase transitions

A B -mode polarization signal in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is widely regarded as smoking gun evidence for gravitational waves produced during inflation. Here, we demonstrate that tensor perturbations sourced during noninflationary epochs can yield non-negligible B -mode signals, which can in principle complicate the interpretation of future observational data. As a case study, we consider tensor perturbations sourced in the bubble collision stage of a first-order cosmological phase transition occurring in a secluded dark sector. Although phase transitions arise from causal subhorizon physics, they nevertheless exhibit a white noise power spectrum on superhorizon scales. Power is suppressed on the large scales relevant for CMB B -mode polarization, but it is not necessarily negligible. We show that for appropriately chosen phase transition parameters, the maximal B -mode amplitude can compete with inflationary predictions that can be tested with current and future experiments. These scenarios can be differentiated by performing measurements on multiple angular scales, since the phase transition signal predicts peak power on smaller scales.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Decoherence Noise on the Superconducting Qubits Training Program

Quantum computing is a growing field with promising applications in a variety of fields such as healthcare, energy consumption, and cryptography. Quantum computing leverages the principles of quantum mechanics - superposition and entanglement. Yet, in the Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) Era - quantum systems face the major challenge of decoherence due to noise. This era is characterized by low amounts of qubits and high gate error. Decoherence leads to the loss of the quantum information stored in the qubit. Noise occurs with any quantum system that is exposed to the environment. It should also be noted that quantum information can be stored in the cavity - Fermilab specializes in coupling transmons to ultrahigh-Q SRF cavities. The Superconducting Qubits Training Program (SQTP) provides a visualization for beginners in quantum computing. The open quantum system simulated is a superconducting qubit (two-level atom) coupled to a microwave cavity whose excitations are photons. The Rotating Wave Approximation of the Jaynes-Cumming Hamiltonian is used. SQTP utilizes open-source Python-based libraries scQubits, NumPy, and QuTiP alongside the Master Lindblad equation. In this project, we study the different decay behaviors of qubits and cavities with collapse operators.

Lopez, Sara↗
DOE OSTI2021

Hardware-Efficient Microwave-Activated Tunable Coupling between Superconducting Qubits

Generating high-fidelity, tunable entanglement between qubits is crucial for realizing gate-based quantum computation. In superconducting circuits, tunable interactions are often implemented using flux-tunable qubits or coupling elements, adding control complexity and noise sources. Here, we realize a tunable $ZZ$ interaction between two transmon qubits with fixed frequencies and fixed coupling, induced by driving both transmons off-resonantly. We show tunable coupling over one order of magnitude larger than the static coupling, and change the sign of the interaction, enabling cancellation of the idle coupling. Further, this interaction is amenable to large quantum processors: the drive frequency can be flexibly chosen to avoid spurious transitions, and because both transmons are driven, it is resilient to microwave crosstalk. We apply this interaction to implement a controlled phase (CZ) gate with a gate fidelity of $99.43(1)\%$ as measured by cycle benchmarking, and we observe the fidelity is limited by incoherent errors.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2026

Enhancing Coherence Limits in Superconducting Quantum Systems for Computing and Sensing

This talk will highlight recent efforts at the SQMS Center to develop qudit-based quantum computing architectures using superconducting three-dimensional (3D) cavities, as well as the use of these ultra-coherent cavities for quantum sensing. I will present systematic studies of materials and devices aimed at identifying and mitigating the dominant sources of decoherence—including two-level systems (TLS), quasiparticles, and other noise mechanisms—in both transmons and 3D cavities. These investigations include microwave loss characterization of niobium, tantalum, aluminum, their native oxides, and substrate materials such as silicon and sapphire. By combining measurements on qubits and cavities, we disentangle subsystem-specific loss mechanisms and establish a hierarchy of mitigation strategies, leading to transmon coherence times exceeding one millisecond. I will also discuss studies of quasiparticle dynamics, including quasiparticle bursts observed in qubits operated both above ground and at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory, and the observation that applied magnetic fields can suppress temporal T₁ fluctuations. Building on these advances, we demonstrate a record-coherence two-cell cavity-qudit system with coherence times exceeding 20 milliseconds. Leveraging tunable sideband interactions together with error-resilient protocols, including measurement-based error correction and post-selection, we achieve high-fidelity quantum state control, including the preparation of Fock states up to N=20 with fidelities above 95% and the generation of high-fidelity two-mode entangled states. Finally, I will discuss how these ultra-coherent quantum systems are enabling emerging quantum sensing applications, including searches for dark matter and gravitational waves.

Roy, Tanay [Fermilab] (ORCID:000000019442862X)↗
DOE OSTI2022

Transitioning from Stage-III to Stage-IV: Cosmology from galaxy×CMB lensing and shear×CMB lensing (Final Report for Grant SC0021429 "Cosomology with Galaxy and CMB Surveys: Mitigating Systematic Effects Through Combining Datasets")

We examine the cosmological constraining power from two cross-correlation probes between galaxy and cosmic microwave background (CMB) surveys: the cross-correlation of lens galaxy density with CMB lensing convergence $\langle δ_g$$^κ\text{CMB}\rangle$, and source galaxy weak lensing shear with CMB lensing convergence $\langle^{γκ}$$_{\text{CMB}}\rangle$. These two cross-correlation probes provide an independent cross-check of other large-scale structure constraints and are insensitive to galaxy-only or CMB-only systematic effects. In addition, when combined with other large-scale structure probes, the cross-correlations can break degeneracies in cosmological and nuisance parameters, improving both the precision and robustness of the analysis. In this work, we study how the constraining power of $\langle δ_g$$^κ\text{CMB}\rangle + \langle^{γκ}$$_{\text{CMB}}\rangle$ changes from Stage-III (ongoing) to Stage-IV (future) surveys. Given the flexibility in selecting the lens galaxy sample, we also explore systematically the impact on cosmological constraints when we vary the redshift range and magnitude limit of the lens galaxies using mock galaxy catalogs. We find that in our setup, the contribution to cosmological constraints from $\langle δ_g$$^κ\text{CMB}\rangle$ and $\langle^{γκ}$$_{\text{CMB}}\rangle$ are comparable in the Stage-III data sets; but in Stage-IV surveys, the noise in$\langle δ_g$$^κ\text{CMB}\rangle$ becomes subdominant to cosmic variance, preventing $\langle δ_g$$^κ\text{CMB}\rangle$ to further improve the constraints. This implies that to maximize the cosmological constraints from future $\langle δ_g$$^κ\text{CMB}\rangle$ + $\langle^{γκ}$$_{\text{CMB}}\rangle$ analyses, we should focus more on the requirements on$^{γκ}$$_{\text{CMB}}\rangle$ instead of$\langle δ_g$$^κ\text{CMB}\rangle$. Furthermore, the selection of the lens sample should be optimized in terms of our ability to characterize its redshift or galaxy bias instead of its number density.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Waiting for inflation: A new initial state for the Universe

We propose a cosmological lingering phase for the initial state prior to inflation which would help address the singularity problem of inflation. The Universe begins with a constant (Hagedorn) temperature and then transitions into an inflationary universe while preserving the null energy condition (NEC). We first consider the phase space of positive spatial curvature models within general relativity and with matter sources that respect the NEC. Depending on the duration of the postlingering inflation, these models can produce a small amount of observable spatial curvature in the cosmic microwave background. We also discuss how lingering can arise with or without spatial curvature in theories of quantum gravity when considering the thermodynamic scaling of particles and its impact on the early Universe. The string theory dilaton is essential to the dynamics. There are many open questions that remain. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Melcher, Brandon (ORCID:0000000280849682)↗