# A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Gravitational Lensing Potential from 100 Square Degrees of SPTpol Data

Source: [A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Gravitational Lensing Potential from 100 Square Degrees of SPTpol Data](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa32451e209131ce886765>)

Collection index: [llms.txt](<https://www.sota2.com/research/llms.txt>)

Data updated: 2025-10-28T13:53:45.365Z

Authors: K. T. Story, D. Hanson, P. A. R. Ade, K. A. Aird, J. E. Austermann, J. A. Beall, A. N. Bender, B. A. Benson, L. E. Bleem, J. E. Carlstrom, C. L. Chang, H. C. Chiang, H-M. Cho, R. Citron, T. M. Crawford, A. T. Crites, T. de Haan, M. A. Dobbs, W. Everett, J. Gallicchio, J. Gao, E. M. George, A. Gilbert, N. W. Halverson, N. Harrington, J. W. Henning, G. C. Hilton, G. P. Holder, W. L. Holzapfel, S. Hoover, Z. Hou, J. D. Hrubes, N. Huang, J. Hubmayr, K. D. Irwin, R. Keisler, L. Knox, A. T. Lee, E. M. Leitch, D. Li, C. Liang, D. Luong-Van, J. J. McMahon, J. Mehl, S. S. Meyer, L. Mocanu, T. E. Montroy, T. Natoli, J. P. Nibarger, V. Novosad, S. Padin, C. Pryke, C. L. Reichardt, J. E. Ruhl, B. R. Saliwanchik, J.T. Sayre, K. K. Schaffer, G. Smecher, A. A. Stark, C. Tucker, K. Vanderlinde, J. D. Vieira, G. Wang, N. Whitehorn, V. Yefremenko, O. Zahn

Published: 2014-12-15T20:53:30.000Z

## Abstract

We present a measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) gravitational lensing potential using data from the first two seasons of observations with SPTpol, the polarization-sensitive receiver currently installed on the South Pole Telescope (SPT). The observations used in this work cover 100 deg$^2$ of sky with arcminute resolution at 150 GHz. Using a quadratic estimator, we make maps of the CMB lensing potential from combinations of CMB temperature and polarization maps. We combine these lensing potential maps to form a minimum-variance (MV) map. The lensing potential is measured with a signal-to-noise ratio of greater than one for angular multipoles between $100\< L \<250$. This is the highest signal-to-noise mass map made from the CMB to date and will be powerful in cross-correlation with other tracers of large-scale structure. We calculate the power spectrum of the lensing potential for each estimator, and we report the value of the MV power spectrum between $100\< L \<2000$ as our primary result. We constrain the ratio of the spectrum to a fiducial $\\Lambda$CDM model to be $A\_{\\rm MV}=0.92 \\pm 0.14 {\\rm\\, (Stat.)} \\pm 0.08 {\\rm\\, (Sys.)}$. Restricting ourselves to polarized data only, we find $A\_{\\rm POL}=0.92 \\pm 0.24 {\\rm\\, (Stat.)} \\pm 0.11 {\\rm\\, (Sys.)}$. This measurement rejects the hypothesis of no lensing at $5.9 \\sigma$ using polarization data alone, and at $14 \\sigma$ using both temperature and polarization data.

## Recorded benchmark results

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## Original sources and implementation

[Original paper](<https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.4760>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/1412.4760.pdf>)