BICEP / Keck XV: The BICEP3 CMB Polarimeter and the First Three Year Data Set
Abstract
We report on the design and performance of the BICEP3 instrument and its first three-year data set collected from 2016 to 2018. BICEP3 is a 52cm aperture, refracting telescope designed to observe the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on degree angular scales at 95GHz. It started science observation at the South Pole in 2016 with 2400 antenna-coupled transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers. The receiver first demonstrated new technologies such as large-diameter alumina optics, Zotefoam infrared filters, and flux-activated SQUIDs, allowing higher optical throughput compared to the Keck design. BICEP3 achieved instrument noise-equivalent temperatures of 9.2, 6.8 and 7.1 and reached Stokes and map depths of 5.9, 4.4 and 4.4K-arcmin in 2016, 2017 and 2018, respectively. The combined three-year data set achieved a polarization map depth of 2.8K-arcmin over an effective area of 585 square degrees, which is the deepest CMB polarization map made to date at 95GHz.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2110.00482,
title = {BICEP / Keck XV: The BICEP3 CMB Polarimeter and the First Three Year Data Set},
author = {Keck Collaboration and P. A. R. Ade and Z. Ahmed and M. Amiri and D. Barkats and R. Basu Thakur and D. Beck and C. Bischoff and J. J. Bock and H. Boenish and E. Bullock and V. Buza and J. R. Cheshire and J. Connors and J. Cornelison and M. Crumrine and A. Cukierman and E. V. Denison and M. Dierickx and L. Duband and M. Eiben and S. Fatigoni and J. P. Filippini and S. Fliescher and N. Goeckner-Wald and D. C. Goldfinger and J. Grayson and P. Grimes and G. Halal and G. Hall and M. Halpern and E. Hand and S. Harrison and S. Henderson and S. R. Hildebrandt and G. C. Hilton and J. Hubmayr and H. Hui and K. D. Irwin and J. Kang and K. S. Karkare and E. Karpel and S. Kefeli and S. A. Kernasovskiy and J. M. Kovac and C. L. Kuo and K. Lau and E. M. Leitch and A. Lennox and K. G. Megerian and L. Minutolo and L. Moncelsi and Y. Nakato and T. Namikawa and H. T. Nguyen and R. O'Brient and R. W. Ogburn and S. Palladino and T. Prouve and C. Pryke and B. Racine and C. D. Reintsema and S. Richter and A. Schillaci and B. L. Schmitt and R. Schwarz and C. D. Sheehy and A. Soliman and T. St Germaine and B. Steinbach and R. V. Sudiwala and G. P. Teply and K. L. Thompson and J. E. Tolan and C. Tucker and A. Turner and C. Umilta and C. Verges and A. G. Vieregg and A. Wandui and A. C. Weber and D. V. Wiebe and J. Willmert and C. L. Wong and W. L. K. Wu and H. Yang and K. W. Yoon and E. Young and C. Yu and L. Zeng and C. Zhang and S. Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.00482},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
35 pages, 35 figures, as submitted to ApJ, data and figures available for download at http://bicepkeck.org