The BICEP2 CMB polarization experiment

• Published in: SPIE Proceedings, Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy V
• Main Authors: Ogburn IV, R. W., Ade, Peter A. R., Aikin, R. W., Amiri, M., Benton, S. J., Bock, J. J., Bonetti, J. A., Brevik, J. A., Burger, B., Dowell, C. D., Duband, L., Filippini, J. P., Golwala, S. R., Halpern, M., Hasselfield, M., Hilton, G., Hristov, V. V., Irwin, K., Kaufman, J. P., Keating, B. G., Kovac, J. M., Kuo, C. L., Lange, A. E., Leitch, E. M., Netterfield, C. B., Nguyen, H. T., Orlando, A., Pryke, C. L., Reintsema, C., Richter, S., Ruhl, J. E., Runyan, M. C., Sheehy, C. D., Staniszewski, Z. K., Stokes, S. A., Sudiwala, Rashmikant V., Teply, G. P., Tolan, J. E., Turner, A. D., Wilson, P., Wong, C. L.
• Other Authors: Holland, Wayne S., Zmuidzinas, Jonas
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: QC Physics; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/34335/; https://doi.org/10.1117/12.857864

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.