The QUIET Instrument
Abstract
The Q/U Imaging ExperimenT (QUIET) is designed to measure polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background, targeting the imprint of inflationary gravitational waves at large angular scales (~ 1 degree). Between 2008 October and 2010 December, two independent receiver arrays were deployed sequentially on a 1.4 m side-fed Dragonian telescope. The polarimeters which form the focal planes use a highly compact design based on High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMTs) that provides simultaneous measurements of the Stokes parameters Q, U, and I in a single module. The 17-element Q-band polarimeter array, with a central frequency of 43.1 GHz, has the best sensitivity (69 uK sqrt(s)) and the lowest instrumental systematic errors ever achieved in this band, contributing to the tensor-to-scalar ratio at r < 0.1. The 84-element W-band polarimeter array has a sensitivity of 87 uK sqrt(s) at a central frequency of 94.5 GHz. It has the lowest systematic errors to date, contributing at r < 0.01. The two arrays together cover multipoles in the range l= 25-975. These are the largest HEMT-based arrays deployed to date. This article describes the design, calibration, performance of, and sources of systematic error for the instrument.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1207.5562,
title = {The QUIET Instrument},
author = {QUIET Collaboration and C. Bischoff and A. Brizius and I. Buder and Y. Chinone and K. Cleary and R. N. Dumoulin and A. Kusaka and R. Monsalve and S. K. Naess and L. B. Newburgh and G. Nixon and R. Reeves and K. M. Smith and K. Vanderlinde and I. K. Wehus and M. Bogdan and R. Bustos and S. E. Church and R. Davis and C. Dickinson and H. K. Eriksen and T. Gaier and J. O. Gundersen and M. Hasegawa and M. Hazumi and C. Holler and K. M. Huffenberger and W. A. Imbriale and K. Ishidoshiro and M. E. Jones and P. Kangaslahti and D. J. Kapner and C. R. Lawrence and E. M. Leitch and M. Limon and J. J. McMahon and A. D. Miller and M. Nagai and H. Nguyen and T. J. Pearson and L. Piccirillo and S. J. E. Radford and A. C. S. Readhead and J. L. Richards and D. Samtleben and M. Seiffert and M. C. Shepherd and S. T. Staggs and O. Tajima and K. L. Thompson and R. Williamson and B. Winstein and E. J. Wollack and J. T. L. Zwart},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1207.5562},
year = {2016}
}