Pre-flight integration and characterization of the SPIDER balloon-borne telescope

Abstract

We present the results of integration and characterization of the SPIDER instrument after the 2013 pre-flight campaign. SPIDER is a balloon-borne polarimeter designed to probe the primordial gravitational wave signal in the degree-scale $B$-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background. With six independent telescopes housing over 2000 detectors in the 94 GHz and 150 GHz frequency bands, SPIDER will map 7.5% of the sky with a depth of 11 to 14 $\mu$K$\cdot$arcmin at each frequency, which is a factor of $\sim$5 improvement over Planck. We discuss the integration of the pointing, cryogenic, electronics, and power sub-systems, as well as pre-flight characterization of the detectors and optical systems. SPIDER is well prepared for a December 2014 flight from Antarctica, and is expected to be limited by astrophysical foreground emission, and not instrumental sensitivity, over the survey region.

arXiv comment25 pages, 14 figures. Presented at SPIE Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy VII, June 26, 2014. To be published in Proceedings of SPIE Volume 9153

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Cited by in corpus (15)

• Unifying inflation and dark matter with the Peccei-Quinn field: observable axions and observable tensors
• SPIDER: CMB polarimetry from the edge of space
• Results from the Atacama B-mode Search (ABS) Experiment
• A New Limit on CMB Circular Polarization from SPIDER
• Impact of polarised extragalactic sources on the measurement of CMB B-mode anisotropies
• Forecasting sensitivity on tilt of power spectrum of primordial gravitational waves after Planck satellite
• The Thermal Design, Characterization, and Performance of the SPIDER Long-Duration Balloon Cryostat
• A cryogenic rotation stage with a large clear aperture for the half-wave plates in the Spider instrument
• Impact of half-wave plate systematics on the measurement of cosmic birefringence from CMB polarization
• Precision Predictions for the Primordial Power Spectra of Scalar Potential Models of Inflation
• Impact of half-wave plate systematics on the measurement of CMB $B$-mode polarization
• Overview of the Medium and High Frequency Telescopes of the LiteBIRD satellite mission
• Improving the Single Scalar Consistency Relation
• Geometrical and physical optics analysis for mm-wavelength refractor telescopes designed to map the cosmic microwave background
• In-Flight Performance of Spider's 280 GHz Receivers