The Q/U imaging experiment instrument
Loading...
Date
2013
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The American Astronomical Society
Abstract
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(∼1◦). Between 2008 October
and 2010 December, two independent receiver arrays were deployed sequentially on a 1.4m 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 μKs1/2) 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 μKs1/2 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 ∼ 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.
Description
Keywords
Cosmic background radiation, Cosmology, Observations, Instrumentation, Detectors, Polarimeters, Telescopes
Citation
Biscoff, C. et al. (2013). The Q/U imaging experiment instrument. The Astrophysical Journal , 768 (9): 1-28