The Polarbear-2 and the Simons Array Experiments

• Published in: Journal of low temperature physics 2016-08, Vol.184 (3-4), p.805-810
• Main Authors: Suzuki, A., Ade, P., Akiba, Y., Aleman, C., Arnold, K., Baccigalupi, C., Barch, B., Barron, D., Bender, A., Boettger, D., Borrill, J., Chapman, S., Chinone, Y., Cukierman, A., Dobbs, M., Ducout, A., Dunner, R., Elleflot, T., Errard, J., Fabbian, G., Feeney, S., Feng, C., Fujino, T., Fuller, G., Gilbert, A., Goeckner-Wald, N., Groh, J., Haan, T. De, Hall, G., Halverson, N., Hamada, T., Hasegawa, M., Hattori, K., Hazumi, M., Hill, C., Holzapfel, W., Hori, Y., Howe, L., Inoue, Y., Irie, F., Jaehnig, G., Jaffe, A., Jeong, O., Katayama, N., Kaufman, J., Kazemzadeh, K., Keating, B., Kermish, Z., Keskitalo, R., Kisner, T., Kusaka, A., Jeune, M. Le, Lee, A., Leon, D., Linder, E., Lowry, L., Matsuda, F., Matsumura, T., Miller, N., Mizukami, K., Montgomery, J., Navaroli, M., Nishino, H., Peloton, J., Poletti, D., Puglisi, G., Rebeiz, G., Raum, C., Reichardt, C., Richards, P., Ross, C., Rotermund, K., Segawa, Y., Sherwin, B., Shirley, I., Siritanasak, P., Stebor, N., Stompor, R., Suzuki, J., Tajima, O., Takada, S., Takakura, S., Takatori, S., Tikhomirov, A., Tomaru, T., Westbrook, B., Whitehorn, N., Yamashita, T., Zahn, A., Zahn, O.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: B-mode; Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS; Condensed Matter Physics; cosmic microwave background; gravitational weak lensing; inflation; Magnetic Materials; Magnetism; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; polarization
• ISSN: 0022-2291; 1573-7357
• DOI: 10.1007/s10909-015-1425-4

We present an overview of the design and status of the Polarbear -2 and the Simons Array experiments. Polarbear -2 is a cosmic microwave background polarimetry experiment which aims to characterize the arc-minute angular scale B-mode signal from weak gravitational lensing and search for the degree angular scale B-mode signal from inflationary gravitational waves. The receiver has a 365 mm diameter focal plane cooled to 270 mK. The focal plane is filled with 7588 dichroic lenslet–antenna-coupled polarization sensitive transition edge sensor (TES) bolometric pixels that are sensitive to 95 and 150 GHz bands simultaneously. The TES bolometers are read-out by SQUIDs with 40 channel frequency domain multiplexing. Refractive optical elements are made with high-purity alumina to achieve high optical throughput. The receiver is designed to achieve noise equivalent temperature of 5.8  μ K CMB s in each frequency band. Polarbear -2 will deploy in 2016 in the Atacama desert in Chile. The Simons Array is a project to further increase sensitivity by deploying three Polarbear -2 type receivers. The Simons Array will cover 95, 150, and 220 GHz frequency bands for foreground control. The Simons Array will be able to constrain tensor-to-scalar ratio and sum of neutrino masses to σ ( r ) = 6 × 10 - 3 at r = 0.1 and ∑ m ν ( σ = 1 ) to 40 meV.