LiteBIRD is a next-generation satellite mission to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. On large angular scales the B-mode polarization of the CMB carries the imprint of primordial gravitational waves, and its precise measurement would provide a powerful probe of the epoch of inflation. The goal of LiteBIRD is to achieve a measurement of the characterizing tensor to scalar ratio r to an uncertainty of δr=0.001. In order to achieve this goal we will employ a kilo-pixel superconducting detector array on a cryogenically cooled sub-Kelvin focal plane with an optical system at a temperature of 4~K. We are currently considering two detector array options; transition edge sensor (TES) bolometers and microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKID). In this paper we give an overview of LiteBIRD and describe a TES-based polarimeter designed to achieve the target sensitivity of 2~μK⋅arcmin over the frequency range 50 to 320~GHz.
@article{arxiv.1311.2847,
title = {Mission design of LiteBIRD},
author = {T. Matsumura and Y. Akiba and J. Borrill and Y. Chinone and M. Dobbs and H. Fuke and A. Ghribi and M. Hasegawa and K. Hattori and M. Hattori and M. Hazumi and W. Holzapfel and Y. Inoue and K. Ishidoshiro and H. Ishino and H. Ishitsuka and K. Karatsu and N. Katayama and I. Kawano and A. Kibayashi and Y. Kibe and K. Kimura and N. Kimura and K. Koga and M. Kozu and E. Komatsu and A. Lee and H. Matsuhara and S. Mima and K. Mitsuda and K. Mizukami and H. Morii and T. Morishima and S. Murayama and M. Nagai and R. Nagata and S. Nakamura and M. Naruse and K. Natsume and T. Nishibori and H. Nishino and A. Noda and T. Noguchi and H. Ogawa and S. Oguri and I. Ohta and C. Otani and P. Richards and S. Sakai and N. Sato and Y. Sato and Y. Sekimoto and A. Shimizu and K. Shinozaki and H. Sugita and T. Suzuki and A. Suzuki and O. Tajima and S. Takada and S. Takakura and Y. Takei and T. Tomaru and Y. Uzawa and T. Wada and H. Watanabe and N. Yamasaki and M. Yoshida and T. Yoshida and K. Yotsumoto},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1311.2847},
year = {2014}
}