Open Collections

BICEP2 CMB polarization experiment.

Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)

The Bicep2 telescope is designed to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background on angular scales near 2-4 degrees, near the expected peak of the B-mode polarization signal induced by primordial gravitational waves from inflation. Bicep2 follows the success of Bicep, which has set the most sensitive current limits on B-modes on 2-4 degree scales. The experiment adopts a new detector design in which beam-defining slot antennas are coupled to TES detectors photolithographically patterned in the same silicon wafer, with multiplexing SQUID readout. Bicep2 takes advantage of this design's higher focal-plane packing density, ease of fabrication, and multiplexing readout to field more detectors than Bicep1, improving mapping speed by nearly a factor of 10. Bicep2 was deployed to the South Pole in November 2009 with 500 polarization-sensitive detectors at 150 GHz, and is funded for two seasons of observation. The first months' data demonstrate the performance of the Caltech/JPL antenna-coupled TES arrays, and two years of observation with Bicep2 will achieve unprecedented sensitivity to B-modes on degree angular scales. Copyright 2010 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited.

Text

2011-09-13

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/37248

Ogburn IV, Reuben W.; Ade, Peter A. R.; Aiken, Randol W.; Amiri, Mandana; Benton, Steven J.; Bock, James J.; Bonetti, Joseph A.; Brevik, Justus A.; Burger, Bryce; Dowell, C. Darren; Duband, Lionel; Filippini, Jeffrey P.; Golwala, Sunil R.; Halpern, Mark; Hasselfield, Matthew; Hilton, Gene C.; Hristov, Viktor V.; Irwin, Kent D.; Kaufman, Jonathan P.; Keating, Brian G.; Kovac, John M.; Kuo, Chao Lin; Lange, Andrew E.; Leitch, Erik M.; Netterfield, C. Barth; Nguyen, Hien Trong; Orlando, Angiola; Pryke, Clement L.; Reintsema, Carl D.; Richter, Steffen; Ruhl, John E.; Runyan, Marcus C.; Sheehy, Christopher D.; Staniszewski, Zachary K.; Stokes, Sarah A.; Sudiwala, Rashmi V.; Teply, Grant P.; Tolan, James; Turner, Anthony D.; Wilson, Phil; Wong, Chin Lin. BICEP2 CMB polarization experiment. Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy V, edited by Holland, Wayne S.; Jonas Zmuidzinas, Proceedings of SPIE Volume 7741, 77411G, 2010.

Reviewed

Halpern, Mark

DSpace