BICEP2 II: Experiment and Three-Year Data Set

Abstract

We report on the design and performance of the BICEP2 instrument and on its three-year data set. BICEP2 was designed to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on angular scales of 1 to 5 degrees ($\ell$=40-200), near the expected peak of the B-mode polarization signature of primordial gravitational waves from cosmic inflation. Measuring B-modes requires dramatic improvements in sensitivity combined with exquisite control of systematics. The BICEP2 telescope observed from the South Pole with a 26~cm aperture and cold, on-axis, refractive optics. BICEP2 also adopted a new detector design in which beam-defining slot antenna arrays couple to transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers, all fabricated on a common substrate. The antenna-coupled TES detectors supported scalable fabrication and multiplexed readout that allowed BICEP2 to achieve a high detector count of 500 bolometers at 150 GHz, giving unprecedented sensitivity to B-modes at degree angular scales. After optimization of detector and readout parameters, BICEP2 achieved an instrument noise-equivalent temperature of 15.8 $\mu$K sqrt(s). The full data set reached Stokes Q and U map depths of 87.2 nK in square-degree pixels (5.2 $\mu$K arcmin) over an effective area of 384 square degrees within a 1000 square degree field. These are the deepest CMB polarization maps at degree angular scales to date. The power spectrum analysis presented in a companion paper has resulted in a significant detection of B-mode polarization at degree scales.

30 pages, 24 figures

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Cited by in corpus (147)

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• BICEP2 / Keck Array VI: Improved Constraints On Cosmology and Foregrounds When Adding 95 GHz Data From Keck Array
• BICEP2 / Keck Array x: Constraints on Primordial Gravitational Waves using Planck, WMAP, and New BICEP2/Keck Observations through the 2015 Season
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• Reheating predictions in single field inflation
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• On a new theoretical framework for RR Lyrae stars I: the metallicity dependence
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• Broadband Angular Selectivity of Light at the Nanoscale: Progress, Applications and Outlook
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• BICEP2 / Keck Array V: Measurements of B-mode Polarization at Degree Angular Scales and 150 GHz by the Keck Array
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• Antenna-coupled TES bolometers used in BICEP2, Keck array, and SPIDER
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• B-modes and the Nature of Inflation
• Constraints on secret neutrino interactions after Planck
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• Gravitational Waves and Scalar Perturbations from Spectator Fields
• The Knotted Sky II: Does BICEP2 require a nontrivial primordial power spectrum?
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• The Knotted Sky I: Planck constraints on the primordial power spectrum
• Year two instrument status of the SPT-3G cosmic microwave background receiver
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• BICEP2/Keck Array IV: Optical Characterization and Performance of the BICEP2 and Keck Array Experiments
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• Survey strategy optimization for the Atacama Cosmology Telescope
• BICEP / Keck XVII: Line of Sight Distortion Analysis: Estimates of Gravitational Lensing, Anisotropic Cosmic Birefringence, Patchy Reionization, and Systematic Errors
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• Higgs mass in Noncommutative Geometry
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• Sub-Planckian Two-Field Inflation Consistent with the Lyth Bound
• Warm intermediate inflation in the Randall-Sundrum II model in the light of Planck 2015 and BICEP2 results: A general dissipative coefficient
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