Improved Measurement of the Angular Power Spectrum of Temperature Anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background from Two New Analyses of BOOMERANG Observations
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Abstract
We report the most complete analysis to date of observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) obtained during the 1998 flight of BOOMERANG. We use two quite different methods to determine the angular power spectrum of the CMB in 20 bands centered at l = 50-1000, applying them to ~50% more data than has previously been analyzed. The power spectra produced by the two methods are in good agreement with each other and constitute the most sensitive measurements to date over the range 300 < l < 1000. The increased precision of the power spectrum yields more precise determinations of several cosmological parameters than previous analyses of BOOMERANG data. The results continue to support an inflationary paradigm for the origin of the universe, being well fitted by a ~13.5 Gyr old, flat universe composed of approximately 5% baryonic matter, 30% cold dark matter, and 65% dark energy, with a spectral index of initial density perturbations ns ~ 1.