Lensing reconstruction from the cosmic microwave background polarization with machine learning

Abstract: The lensing effect of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a powerful tool for our study of the distribution of matter in the universe. Currently, the quadratic estimator (EQ) method, which is widely used to reconstruct lensing potential, has been known to be sub-optimal for the low-noise levels polarization data from next-generation CMB experiments. To improve the performance of the reconstruction, other methods, such as the maximum likelihood estimator and machine learning algorithms are developed. In this work, we present a deep convolutional neural network model named the Residual Dense Local Feature U-net (RDLFUnet) for reconstructing the CMB lensing convergence field. By simulating lensed CMB data with different noise levels to train and test network models, we find that for noise levels less than $5\mu$K-arcmin, RDLFUnet can recover the input gravitational potential with a higher signal-to-noise ratio than the previous deep learning and the traditional QE methods at almost the entire observation scales.