The BaR-SPOrt Experiment

Abstract

BaR-SPOrt (Balloon-borne Radiometers for Sky Polarisation Observations) is an experiment to measure the linearly polarized emission of sky patches at 32 and 90 GHz with sub-degree angular resolution. It is equipped with high sensitivity correlation polarimeters for simultaneous detection of both the U and Q stokes parameters of the incident radiation. On-axis telescope is used to observe angular scales where the expected polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMBP) peaks. This project shares most of the know-how and sophisticated technology developed for the SPOrt experiment onboard the International Space Station. The payload is designed to flight onboard long duration stratospheric balloons both in the Northern and Southern hemispheres where low foreground emission sky patches are accessible. Due to the weakness of the expected CMBP signal (in the range of microK), much care has been spent to optimize the instrument design with respect to the systematics generation, observing time efficiency and long term stability. In this contribution we present the instrument design, and first tests on some components of the 32 GHz radiometer.

12 pages, 10 figures, Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation (Polaimetry in Astronomy) Hawaii August 2002 SPIE Meeting

References in corpus (6)

• MAXIMA-1: A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy on angular scales of 10 arcminutes to 5 degrees
• Foregrounds and Forecasts for the Cosmic Microwave Background
• A Limit on the Large Angular Scale Polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• An Australia telescope survey for CMB anisotropies
• A Limit on the Polarized Anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background at Subdegree Angular Scales
• Limits Due to Instrumental Polarisation in CMB Experiments at Microwave Wavelengths