Improved Absolute Polarization Calibrator for BICEP CMB Polarimeters
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
2025-10-16 v1
Abstract
Cosmic birefringence is a hypothesized parity violation in electromagnetism that predicts a frequency-independent polarization rotation as light propagates. This would rotate the light from the Cosmic Microwave Background, producing an unexpected EB correlation. However, cosmic birefringence angle is degenerate with instrument polarization angle, and breaking this degeneracy requires an absolute polarization calibration. We calibrate the BICEP3 telescope (a 95GHz CMB polarimeter) by observing a rotating polarized source (RPS) with both the telescope and a small test receiver called the In-Situ Absolute Angle Calibrator (ISAAC).
Cite
@article{arxiv.2510.13032,
title = {Improved Absolute Polarization Calibrator for BICEP CMB Polarimeters},
author = {A. R. Polish and P. A. R. Ade and Z. Ahmed and M. Amiri and D. Barkats and R. Basu Thakur and C. A. Bischoff and D. Beck and J. J. Bock and H. Boenish and V. Buza and B. Cantrall and J. R. Cheshire and J. Connors and J. Cornelison and M. Crumrine and A. J. Cukierman and E. Denison and L. Duband and M. Echter and M. Eiben and B. D. Elwood and S. Fatigoni and J. P. Filippini and A. Fortes and M. Gao and C. Giannakopoulos and N. Goeckner-Wald and D. C. Goldfinger and S. Gratton and J. A. Grayson and A. Greathouse and P. K. Grimes and G. Hall and G. Halal and M. Halpern and E. Hand and S. A. Harrison and S. Henderson and T. D. Hoang and J. Hubmayr and H. Hui and K. D. Irwin and J. H. Kang and K. S. Karkare and S. Kefeli and J. M. Kovac and C. Kuo and K. Lasko and K. K. Lau and M. Lautzenhiser and A. Lennox and T. Liu and S. Mackey and N. Maher and K. G. Megerian and L. Minutolo and L. Moncelsi and Y. Nakato and H. T. Nguyen and R. O'Brient and S. N. Paine and A. Patel and M. A. Petroff and T. Prouve and C. Pryke and C. D. Reintsema and T. Romand and M. Salatino and A. Schillaci and B. Schmitt and B. Singari and A. Soliman and T. St. Germaine and A. Steiger and B. Steinbach and R. Sudiwala and K. L. Thompson and C. Tsai and C. Tucker and A. D. Turner and C. Verges and A. G. Vieregg and A. Wandui and A. C. Weber and J. Willmert and W. L. K. Wu and H. Yang and C. Yu and L. Zheng and C. Zhang and S. Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.13032},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
As submitted to the proceedings of the mm Universe conference, 2025