Instituto de Física Teórica UAM/CSIC (Webpage 2008-2015)

In March 2014, the BICEP2 team sensationally claimed the first detection
of primordial gravitational waves imprinted in the polarization of the
Cosmic Microwave Background. It has soon been noted how that result
lacked in control of possible contamination from inter-stellar dust in
our Galaxy, due to absence of data. The Planck space telescope is now
presenting the missing data: a map of the polarization generated by
galactic dust, obtained by its unique 353 GHz polarization sensitive
channel. This map is used to calculate the dust polarization angular
power spectra. We show that even in the faintest dust-emitting regions
there are no “clean” windows in the sky where primordial CMB B-mode
polarization measurements could be made without subtraction of
foreground emission. In particular, Planck team is measuring a possible
contamination of the BICEP2 result as large as their detection. In this
seminar, I present the last Planck result, and the status of this
rapidly evolving research activity.