* Astronomy

Title: SPIDER: A Balloon-borne Large-scale CMB Polarimeter
Authors: B. P. Crill, P.A.R. Ade, E. S. Battistelli, S. Benton, R. Bihary, J. J. Bock, J. R. Bond, J. Brevik, S. Bryan, C. R. Contaldi, O. Dore, M. Farhang, L. Fissel, S. R. Golwala, M. Halpern, G. Hilton, W. Holmes, V. V. Hristov, K. Irwin, W. C. Jones, C. L. Kuo, A. E. Lange, C. Lawrie, C. J. MacTavish, T. G. Martin, P. Mason, T. E. Montroy, C. B. Netterfield, E. Pascale, D. Riley, J. E. Ruhl, M. C. Runyan, A. Trangsrud, C. Tucker, A. Turner, M. Viero, D. Wiebe

Spider is a balloon-borne experiment that will measure the polarisation of the Cosmic Microwave Background over a large fraction of a sky at 1 degree resolution. Six monochromatic refracting millimeter-wave telescopes with large arrays of antenna-coupled transition-edge superconducting bolometers will provide system sensitivities of 4.2 and 3.1 micro K_cmb rt s at 100 and 150 GHz, respectively. A rotating half-wave plate will modulate the polarisation sensitivity of each telescope, controlling systematics. Bolometer arrays operating at 225 GHz and 275 GHz will allow removal of polarised galactic foregrounds. In a 2-6 day first flight from Alice Springs, Australia in 2010, Spider will map 50% of the sky to a depth necessary to improve our knowledge of the reionisation optical depth by a large factor.

Read more (3579kb, PDF)