Efficiency of pseudo-spectrum methods for estimation of Cosmic Microwave Background B-mode power spectrum

Understand

Estimation of the B-mode angular power spectrum of polarized anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a key step towards a full exploitation of the scientific potential of this probe.

• In the context of pseudo-spectrum methods the major challenge is related to a contamination of the B-mode spectrum estimate with residual power of much larger E-mode.
• This so-called E-to-B leakage is unavoidably present whenever an incomplete sky map is only available, as is the case for any realistic observation.
• The leakage has to be then minimized or removed and ideally in such a way that neither a bias nor extra variance is introduced.