Development of large radii half-wave plates for CMB satellite missions

Abstract

The successful European Space Agency (ESA) Planck mission has mapped the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropy with unprecedented accuracy. However, Planck was not designed to detect the polarised components of the CMB with comparable precision. The BICEP2 collaboration has recently reported the first detection of the B-mode polarisation. ESA is funding the development of critical enabling technologies associated with B-mode polarisation detection, one of these being large diameter half-wave plates. We compare different polarisation modulators and discuss their respective trade-offs in terms of manufacturing, RF performance and thermo-mechanical properties. We then select the most appropriate solution for future satellite missions, optimized for the detection of B-modes.

arXiv comment16 pages

References in corpus (8)

• BICEP2 I: Detection Of B-mode Polarization at Degree Angular Scales
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• Properties of a Variable-delay Polarization Modulator
• A New Artificial Dielectric Metamaterial and its Application as a THz Anti-Reflection Coating
• SWIPE: a bolometric polarimeter for the Large-Scale Polarization Explorer
• A Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation Polarimeter Using Superconducting Bearings
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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Updated design of the CMB polarization experiment satellite LiteBIRD
• Performance of a continuously rotating half-wave plate on the POLARBEAR telescope
• Exploring Cosmic Origins with CORE: The Instrument
• POLOCALC: a Novel Method to Measure the Absolute Polarization Orientation of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Instrumental performance and results from testing of the BLAST-TNG receiver, submillimeter optics, and MKID arrays
• Probing frequency-dependent half-wave plate systematics for CMB experiments with full-sky beam convolution simulations
• QUBIC VIII: Optical design and performance
• Impact of half-wave plate systematics on the measurement of cosmic birefringence from CMB polarization
• The Simons Observatory: Development and Optical Evaluation of Achromatic Half-Wave Plates
• Impact of half-wave plate systematics on the measurement of CMB $B$-mode polarization
• BFORE: The B-mode Foreground Experiment
• Development and application of metamaterial-based Half-Wave Plates for the NIKA and NIKA2 polarimeters