CMB angular power spectra and cosmological implications from the 2003 LDB flight of the BOOMERANG telescope

In January 2003 the BOOMERANG telescope completed a second successful flight over the Antarctic continent. In this thesis an overview of the BOOMERANG instrument is given, with emphasis on the pointing system. The analysis of the BOOMERANG 2003 (B03) flight data from Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) maps to angular power spectra is also described. The final B03 temperature angular power spectrum represents the most precise intermediate scale measurement of CMB temperature anisotropy to date. The final polarization power spectrum represents a ∼5sigma detection in the ℓ = 100 to ℓ = 1000 multipole range. The Polarization Sensitive Bolometers (PSBs) used in B03 are the first of their kind and will be used in the High Frequency Instrument (HFI) on the Planck Surveyor satellite. The successful B03 CMB anisotropy measurements using PSBs represents a critical first step for the Planck satellite mission.; The B03 data alone constrains the parameters of the standard ΛCDM model---a Universe in which Cold Dark Matter and a cosmological constant, Λ, are the dominant energy components---remarkably well and is consistent with constraints from a multi-experiment combined CMB data set (hereafter CMBall). Several extensions to the standard model are tested using both the CMBall data set and a combined CMBall + Large Scale Structure (LSS) data set. The resulting constraints from the CMBall + LSS data set, representing the most up-to-date parameter analysis, are: slight evidence (both <2sigma) for a running index and curvature; an upper (95% confidence) limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio of At/ As < 0.36; an upper (95% confidence) limit on the neutrino mass of mnu < 0.40 eV mnu < 0.4eV (m nu < 1.0eV from CMB data alone); and, after adding the supernova (SNIa) data, a constraint on the dark energy equation of state of w = -0.94+0.093-0.097 (68% confidence interval). Also included is an analysis of the CMBall + HST (H0 value determined from the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project) constraints to a model which includes a CDM isocurvature mixture. The resulting allowed isocurvature CMB bandpower contamination is only a few percent.