We report on the design and performance of the B icep3 instrument and its first three-year data set collected from 2016 to 2018. B icep3 is a 52 cm aperture refracting telescope designed to observe the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on degree angular scales at 95 GHz. It started science observation at the South Pole in 2016 with 2400 antenna-coupled transition-edge sensor bolometers. The receiver first demonstrated new technologies such as large-diameter alumina optics, Zotefoam infrared filters, and flux-activated SQUIDs, allowing ∼10× higher optical throughput compared to the Keck design. B icep3 achieved instrument noise equivalent temperatures of 9.2, 6.8, and 7.1 and reached Stokes Q and U map depths of 5.9, 4.4, and 4.4 μ K arcmin in 2016, 2017, and 2018, respectively. The combined three-year data set achieved a polarization map depth of 2.8 μ K arcmin over an effective area of 585 square degrees, which is the deepest CMB polarization map made to date at 95 GHz.
Ade, P. A. R., et al. "Bicep/Keck XV: The Bicep3 Cosmic Microwave Background Polarimeter and the First Three-year Data Set." The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 927, no. 1, Mar. 2022. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac4886
Ade, P. A. R., Ahmed, Z., Amiri, M., Barkats, D., Thakur, R. Basu, Bischoff, C. A., Beck, D., Bock, J. J., Boenish, H., Bullock, E., Buza, V., Cheshire IV, J. R., Connors, J., Cornelison, J., Crumrine, M., Cukierman, A., Denison, E. V., Dierickx, M., ... Zhang, S. (2022). Bicep/Keck XV: The Bicep3 Cosmic Microwave Background Polarimeter and the First Three-year Data Set. The Astrophysical Journal, 927(1). https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac4886
Ade, P. A. R., Ahmed, Z., Amiri, M., et al., "Bicep/Keck XV: The Bicep3 Cosmic Microwave Background Polarimeter and the First Three-year Data Set," The Astrophysical Journal 927, no. 1 (2022), https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac4886
@article{osti_1847971,
author = {Ade, P. A. R. and Ahmed, Z. and Amiri, M. and Barkats, D. and Thakur, R. Basu and Bischoff, C. A. and Beck, D. and Bock, J. J. and Boenish, H. and Bullock, E. and others},
title = {Bicep/Keck XV: The Bicep3 Cosmic Microwave Background Polarimeter and the First Three-year Data Set},
annote = {Abstract We report on the design and performance of the B icep3 instrument and its first three-year data set collected from 2016 to 2018. B icep3 is a 52 cm aperture refracting telescope designed to observe the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on degree angular scales at 95 GHz. It started science observation at the South Pole in 2016 with 2400 antenna-coupled transition-edge sensor bolometers. The receiver first demonstrated new technologies such as large-diameter alumina optics, Zotefoam infrared filters, and flux-activated SQUIDs, allowing ∼10× higher optical throughput compared to the Keck design. B icep3 achieved instrument noise equivalent temperatures of 9.2, 6.8, and 7.1 μ K CMB s and reached Stokes Q and U map depths of 5.9, 4.4, and 4.4 μ K arcmin in 2016, 2017, and 2018, respectively. The combined three-year data set achieved a polarization map depth of 2.8 μ K arcmin over an effective area of 585 square degrees, which is the deepest CMB polarization map made to date at 95 GHz. },
doi = {10.3847/1538-4357/ac4886},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1847971},
journal = {The Astrophysical Journal},
issn = {ISSN 0004-637X},
number = {1},
volume = {927},
place = {United States},
publisher = {American Astronomical Society},
year = {2022},
month = {03}}