SPIDER: a balloon-borne CMB polarimeter for large angular scales
Abstract
We describe SPIDER, a balloon-borne instrument to map the polarization of the millimeter-wave sky with degree angular resolution. Spider consists of six monochromatic refracting telescopes, each illuminating a focal plane of large-format antenna-coupled bolometer arrays. A total of 2,624 superconducting transition-edge sensors are distributed among three observing bands centered at 90, 150, and 280 GHz. A cold half-wave plate at the aperture of each telescope modulates the polarization of incoming light to control systematics. Spider's first flight will be a 20-30-day Antarctic balloon campaign in December 2011. This flight will map \sim8% of the sky to achieve unprecedented sensitivity to the polarization signature of the gravitational wave background predicted by inflationary cosmology. The Spider mission will also serve as a proving ground for these detector technologies in preparation for a future satellite mission.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1106.2158,
title = {SPIDER: a balloon-borne CMB polarimeter for large angular scales},
author = {J. P. Filippini and P. A. R. Ade and M. Amiri and S. J. Benton and R. Bihary and J. J. Bock and J. R. Bond and J. A. Bonetti and S. A. Bryan and B. Burger and H. C. Chiang and C. R. Contaldi and B. P. Crill and O. Doré and M. Farhang and L. M. Fissel and N. N. Gandilo and S. R. Golwala and J. E. Gudmundsson and M. Halpern and M. Hasselfield and G. Hilton and W. Holmes and V. V. Hristov and K. D. Irwin and W. C. Jones and C. L. Kuo and C. J. MacTavish and P. V. Mason and T. E. Montroy and T. A. Morford and C. B. Netterfield and D. T. O'Dea and A. S. Rahlin and C. D. Reintsema and J. E. Ruhl and M. C. Runyan and M. A. Schenker and J. A. Shariff and J. D. Soler and A. Trangsrud and C. Tucker and R. S. Tucker and A. D. Turner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1106.2158},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
12 pages, 6 figures; as published in the conference proceedings for SPIE Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy V (2010)