Polarization Calibration of the BICEP3 CMB polarimeter at the South Pole
Abstract
The BICEP3 CMB Polarimeter is a small-aperture refracting telescope located at the South Pole and is specifically designed to search for the possible signature of inflationary gravitational waves in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The experiment measures polarization on the sky by differencing the signal of co-located, orthogonally polarized antennas coupled to Transition Edge Sensor (TES) detectors. We present precise measurements of the absolute polarization response angles and polarization efficiencies for nearly all of BICEP3s functioning polarization-sensitive detector pairs from calibration data taken in January 2018. Using a Rotating Polarized Source (RPS), we mapped polarization response for each detector over a full 360 degrees of source rotation and at multiple telescope boresight rotations from which per-pair polarization properties were estimated. In future work, these results will be used to constrain signals predicted by exotic physical models such as Cosmic Birefringence.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2012.05934,
title = {Polarization Calibration of the BICEP3 CMB polarimeter at the South Pole},
author = {J. Cornelison and P. A. R. Ade and Z. Ahmed and M. Amiri and D. Barkats and R. Basu Thakur and C. A. Bischoff and J. J. Bock and H. Boenish and E. Bullock and V. Buza and J. R. Cheshire and J. Connors and M. Crumrine and A. Cukierman and E. 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. A. Grayson and P. Grimes and G. Hall and M. Halpern and S. A. 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 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 N. Precup 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. D. Turner and C. Umiltà 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 E. Yang and K. W. Yoon and E. Young and C. Yu and L. Zeng and C. Zhang and S. Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.05934},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
Proceedings submitted to SPIE 2020 (AS111). 12 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables