Full-sky Models of Galactic Microwave Emission and Polarization at Sub-arcminute Scales for the Python Sky Model

Understand

Polarized foreground emission from the Galaxy is one of the biggest challenges facing current and upcoming cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization experiments.

• We develop new models of polarized Galactic dust and synchrotron emission at CMB frequencies that draw on the latest observational constraints, that employ the ``polarization fraction tensor'' framework to couple intensity and polarization in a physically motivated way, and that allow for stochastic realizations of small-scale structure at sub-arcminute angular scales currently unconstrained by full-sky data.
• We implement these models into the publicly available Python Sky Model (PySM) software and additionally provide PySM interfaces to select models of dust and CO emission from the literature.
• We characterize the behavior of each model by quantitatively comparing it to observational constraints in both maps and power spectra, demonstrating an overall improvement over previous PySM models.