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Sub-Femto-g Free Fall for Space-Based Gravitational Wave Observatories: LISA Pathfinder Results
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.231101 Bibcode: 2016PhRvL.116w1101A

Mendes, L.; Madden, S.; Russano, G. +116 more

We report the first results of the LISA Pathfinder in-flight experiment. The results demonstrate that two free-falling reference test masses, such as those needed for a space-based gravitational wave observatory like LISA, can be put in free fall with a relative acceleration noise with a square root of the power spectral density of 5.2 ±0.1 fm s

2016 Physical Review Letters
LISAPathfinder 472
Kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect with Projected Fields: A Novel Probe of the Baryon Distribution with Planck, WMAP, and WISE Data
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.051301 Bibcode: 2016PhRvL.117e1301H

Spergel, David N.; Ferraro, Simone; Hill, J. Colin +2 more

The kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (KSZ) effect—the Doppler boosting of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons due to Compton scattering off free electrons with nonzero bulk velocity—probes the abundance and the distribution of baryons in the Universe. All KSZ measurements to date have explicitly required spectroscopic redshifts. Here, we impleme…

2016 Physical Review Letters
Planck 147
How Isotropic is the Universe?
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.131302 Bibcode: 2016PhRvL.117m1302S

Peiris, Hiranya V.; Feeney, Stephen M.; Pontzen, Andrew +2 more

A fundamental assumption in the standard model of cosmology is that the Universe is isotropic on large scales. Breaking this assumption leads to a set of solutions to Einstein's field equations, known as Bianchi cosmologies, only a subset of which have ever been tested against data. For the first time, we consider all degrees of freedom in these s…

2016 Physical Review Letters
Planck 128
Demonstration of Cosmic Microwave Background Delensing Using the Cosmic Infrared Background
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.151102 Bibcode: 2016PhRvL.117o1102L

Sherwin, Blake D.; Challinor, Anthony; Larsen, Patricia +1 more

Delensing is an increasingly important technique to reverse the gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and thus reveal primordial signals the lensing may obscure. We present a first demonstration of delensing on Planck temperature maps using the cosmic infrared background (CIB). Reversing the lensing deflections in Planck C…

2016 Physical Review Letters
Planck 58
Observational Test for a Random Sweeping Model in Solar Wind Turbulence
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.125101 Bibcode: 2016PhRvL.116l5101P

Glassmeier, K. H.; Narita, Y.; Perschke, C. +1 more

Evidence of frequency broadening at ion kinetic scales due to large-scale eddies and waves is found in solar wind turbulence by a test for a random sweeping model using the magnetic energy spectrum in the frequency vs wave number domain in the comoving frame of the flow obtained from multispacecraft observations. The statistical analysis of the fr…

2016 Physical Review Letters
Cluster 19
Nonlinear Waves in the Terrestrial Quasiparallel Foreshock
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.235102 Bibcode: 2016PhRvL.117w5102H

Nakariakov, V. M.; Hnat, B.; Kolotkov, D. Y. +2 more

We provide strongly conclusive evidence that the cubic nonlinearity plays an important part in the evolution of the large amplitude magnetic structures in the terrestrial foreshock. Large amplitude nonlinear wave trains at frequencies above the proton cyclotron frequency are identified after nonharmonic slow variations are filtered out by applying…

2016 Physical Review Letters
Cluster 4
Joint Analysis of BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck Data
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.101301 Bibcode: 2015PhRvL.114j1301B

Kneissl, R.; Miville-Deschênes, M. -A.; Boulanger, F. +277 more

We report the results of a joint analysis of data from BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck. BICEP2 and Keck Array have observed the same approximately 400 deg2 patch of sky centered on RA 0 h, Dec. -57.5 ° . The combined maps reach a depth of 57 nK deg in Stokes Q and U in a band centered at 150 GHz. Planck has observed the full sky in polariz…

2015 Physical Review Letters
Planck 949
Checking the Dark Matter Origin of a 3.53 keV Line with the Milky Way Center
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.161301 Bibcode: 2015PhRvL.115p1301B

Boyarsky, A.; Franse, J.; Iakubovskyi, D. +1 more

We detect a line at 3.539 ±0.011 keV in the deep exposure data set of the Galactic center region, observed with the x-ray multi-mirror mission Newton. The dark matter interpretation of the signal observed in the Perseus galaxy cluster, the Andromeda galaxy [A. Boyarsky et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 251301 (2014)], and in the stacked spectra of gal…

2015 Physical Review Letters
XMM-Newton 193
Observing Inflationary Reheating
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.081303 Bibcode: 2015PhRvL.114h1303M

Ringeval, Christophe; Martin, Jérôme; Vennin, Vincent

Reheating is the epoch which connects inflation to the subsequent hot big-bang phase. Conceptually very important, this era is, however, observationally poorly known. We show that the current Planck satellite measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies constrain the kinematic properties of the reheating era for most of the i…

2015 Physical Review Letters
Planck 181
First Detection of the Acoustic Oscillation Phase Shift Expected from the Cosmic Neutrino Background
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.091301 Bibcode: 2015PhRvL.115i1301F

Follin, Brent; Knox, Lloyd; Millea, Marius +1 more

The unimpeded relativistic propagation of cosmological neutrinos prior to recombination of the baryon-photon plasma alters gravitational potentials and therefore the details of the time-dependent gravitational driving of acoustic oscillations. We report here a first detection of the resulting shifts in the temporal phase of the oscillations, which…

2015 Physical Review Letters
Planck 140