A Search for Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies on Arcminute Scales with Bolocam
Abstract
We have surveyed two science fields totaling one square degree with Bolocam at 2.1 mm to search for secondary CMB anisotropies caused by the Sunyaev- Zel'dovich effect (SZE). The fields are in the Lynx and Subaru/XMM SDS1 fields. Our survey is sensitive to angular scales with an effective angular multipole of leff = 5700 with FWHMl = 2800 and has an angular resolution of 60 arcseconds FWHM. Our data provide no evidence for anisotropy. We are able to constrain the level of total astronomical anisotropy, modeled as a flat bandpower in Cl, with frequentist 68%, 90%, and 95% CL upper limits of 590, 760, and 830 uKCMB2. We statistically subtract the known contribution from primary CMB anisotropy, including cosmic variance, to obtain constraints on the SZE anisotropy contribution. Now including flux calibration uncertainty, our frequentist 68%, 90% and 95% CL upper limits on a flat bandpower in Cl are 690, 960, and 1000 uKCMB2. When we instead employ the analytic spectrum suggested by Komatsu and Seljak (2002), and account for the non-Gaussianity of the SZE anisotropy signal, we obtain upper limits on the average amplitude of their spectrum weighted by our transfer function of 790, 1060, and 1080 uKCMB2. We obtain a 90% CL upper limit on sigma8, which normalizes the power spectrum of density fluctuations, of 1.57. These are the first constraints on anisotropy and sigma8 from survey data at these angular scales at frequencies near 150 GHz.