Professor Pedro Ferreira

Abstract:

We discuss MAXIPOL, a bolometric balloon-borne experiment designed to measure the E-mode polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) on angular scales of 10' to 2degrees. MAXIPOL is the first CMB experiment to collect data with a polarimeter that utilizes a rotating half-wave plate and fixed wire-grid polarizer. We present the instrument design, elaborate on the polarimeter strategy and show the instrument performance during flight with some time domain data. Our primary dataset was collected during a 26 h turnaround flight that was launched from the National Scientific Ballooning Facility in Ft. Sumner, New Mexico in May 2003. During this flight five regions of the sky were mapped. Data analysis is in progress. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Abstract:

MAXIMA is a balloon-borne platform for measuring the anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). It has measured the CMB power spectrum with a 10-arcmin FWHM beam, corresponding to a detection of the power spectrum out to spherical harmonic multipole l similar to 1000. The spectrum is consistent with a flat Universe with a nearly scale-invariant initial spectrum of adiabatic density fluctuations. Moreover, the MAXIMA data are free from any notable non-Gaussian contamination and from foreground dust emission. In the same region, the WMAP experiment observes the same structure as that observed by MAXIMA, as evinced by analysis of both maps and power spectra. The next step in the evolution of the MAXIMA program is MAXIPOL, which will observe the polarization of the CMB with comparable resolution and high sensitivity over a small patch of the sky. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.