The Atacama B-mode Search: An Experiment to Probe Inflation by Measuring the Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization

Details The Atacama B-mode Search: An Experiment to Probe Inflation by Measuring the Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization The Atacama B-mode Search: An Experiment to Probe Inflation by Measuring the Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization

Dec 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21348005n&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #480.05

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The Atacama B-mode Seach (ABS) is a new experiment to test the prediction that inflation during the early universe resulted in stochastic gravitational waves. The predicted signature of these inflationary gravitational waves is the introduction of a B-mode, or curl, component into the primordial cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization field, which is dominated by curl-free E-modes. ABS is designed to measure the CMB polarization on large angular scales over a wide frequency band centered at 145 GHz. ABS comprises a 60 cm diameter telescope in the crossed Mizuguchi-Dragone configuration, which illuminates a large focal plane of 200 feedhorns coupled to polarization sensitive bolometric detectors. The detectors are fabricated at NIST and include planar ortho-mode transducers, band defining filters, microstrip tranmission lines and two transition-edge sensors (TES) to provide measurements of the polarization and total power from each feed simultaneously. The telescope mirrors are cooled to 4 K to control systematic effects, and the bolometers are cooled to 0.3 K to achieve sufficiently high saturation power while maintaining low detector noise. The polarization signals are modulated by a 33 cm diameter rotating half-wave plate (HWP) in front of the telescope. The HWP limits the mirror illumination, resulting in 0.5 degree angular resolution over a 20 degree field of view. ABS will begin observing at a high-altitude site in the Atacama Desert, Chile in 2009.

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