EBEX: A balloon-borne CMB polarization experiment
Abstract
EBEX is a NASA-funded balloon-borne experiment designed to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Observations will be made using 1432 transition edge sensor (TES) bolometric detectors read out with frequency multiplexed SQuIDs. EBEX will observe in three frequency bands centered at 150, 250, and 410 GHz, with 768, 384, and 280 detectors in each band, respectively. This broad frequency coverage is designed to provide valuable information about polarized foreground signals from dust. The polarized sky signals will be modulated with an achromatic half wave plate (AHWP) rotating on a superconducting magnetic bearing (SMB) and analyzed with a fixed wire grid polarizer. EBEX will observe a patch covering ~1% of the sky with 8' resolution, allowing for observation of the angular power spectrum from \ell = 20 to 1000. This will allow EBEX to search for both the primordial B-mode signal predicted by inflation and the anticipated lensing B-mode signal. Calculations to predict EBEX constraints on r using expected noise levels show that, for a likelihood centered around zero and with negligible foregrounds, 99% of the area falls below r = 0.035. This value increases by a factor of 1.6 after a process of foreground subtraction. This estimate does not include systematic uncertainties. An engineering flight was launched in June, 2009, from Ft. Sumner, NM, and the long duration science flight in Antarctica is planned for 2011. These proceedings describe the EBEX instrument and the North American engineering flight.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1007.3672,
title = {EBEX: A balloon-borne CMB polarization experiment},
author = {Britt Reichborn-Kjennerud and Asad M. Aboobaker and Peter Ade and Françcois Aubin and Carlo Baccigalupi and Chaoyun Bao and Julian Borrill and Christopher Cantalupo and Daniel Chapman and Joy Didier and Matt Dobbs and Julien Grain and William Grainger and Shaul Hanany and Seth Hillbrand and Johannes Hubmayr and Andrew Jaffe and Bradley Johnson and Terry Jones and Theodore Kisner and Jeff Klein and Andrei Korotkov and Sam Leach and Adrian Lee and Lorne Levinson and Michele Limon and Kevin MacDermid and Tomotake Matsumura and Xiaofan Meng and Amber Miller and Michael Milligan and Enzo Pascale and Daniel Polsgrove and Nicolas Ponthieu and Kate Raach and Ilan Sagiv and Graeme Smecher and Federico Stivoli and Radek Stompor and Huan Tran and Matthieu Tristram and Gregory S. Tucker and Yury Vinokurov and Amit Yadav and Matias Zaldarriaga and Kyle Zilic},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1007.3672},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
12 pages, 9 figures, Conference proceedings for SPIE Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy V (2010)