THE Q/U IMAGING EXPERIMENT INSTRUMENT
- Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, Department of Physics, Enrico Fermi Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637 (United States)
- Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E. California Blvd M/C 249-17, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 (United States)
- Department of Physics, University of Miami, 1320 Campo Sano Drive, Coral Gables, FL 33146 (United States)
- Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1029 Blindern, N-0315 Oslo (Norway)
- Joseph Henry Laboratories of Physics, Jadwin Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 (United States)
- Department of Physics, McGill University, 3600 Rue University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2T8 (Canada)
- Department of Physics, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1048 Blindern, N-0316 Oslo (Norway)
- Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology and Department of Physics, Stanford University, Varian Physics Building, 382 Via Pueblo Mall, Stanford, CA 94305 (United States)
The Q/U Imaging ExperimenT (QUIET) is designed to measure polarization in the cosmic microwave background, targeting the imprint of inflationary gravitational waves at large angular scales({approx}1 Degree-Sign ). Between 2008 October and 2010 December, two independent receiver arrays were deployed sequentially on a 1.4 m side-fed Dragonian telescope. The polarimeters that form the focal planes use a compact design based on high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) that provides simultaneous measurements of the Stokes parameters Q, U, and I in a single module. The 17-element Q-band polarimeter array, with a central frequency of 43.1 GHz, has the best sensitivity (69 {mu}Ks{sup 1/2}) and the lowest instrumental systematic errors ever achieved in this band, contributing to the tensor-to-scalar ratio at r < 0.1. The 84-element W-band polarimeter array has a sensitivity of 87 {mu}Ks{sup 1/2} at a central frequency of 94.5 GHz. It has the lowest systematic errors to date, contributing at r < 0.01. The two arrays together cover multipoles in the range l {approx} 25-975. These are the largest HEMT-based arrays deployed to date. This article describes the design, calibration, performance, and sources of systematic error of the instrument.
- OSTI ID:
- 22126867
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 768, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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