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Astrophysics, Gravitation and Cosmology Seminar - Elle Shaw (UIUC) "The Second Flight of the SPIDER CMB Polarimeter"

Event Type
Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor
Department of Physics
Location
Loomis 464
Date
May 3, 2023   12:00 pm  
Speaker
Elle Shaw
Contact
Brandy Koebbe
E-Mail
bkoebbe@illinois.edu
Views
17
Originating Calendar
Physics - Astrophysics, Relativity, and Cosmology Seminar

Spider is a balloon-borne millimeter-wave polarimeter designed to target B-mode polarization at large angular scales in the Cosmic Microwave Background. These divergence-free B-mode patterns are predicted in inflationary models, and the detection (or non-detection) of their signature on the sky gives constraints on key cosmological parameters such as the tensor-to-scalar ratio r. SPIDER’s first flight in 2015 deployed three 95 GHz and three 150 GHz receivers. In December 2022, SPIDER flew for the second time, with three new receivers tuned to 280 GHz for sensitivity to galactic dust emissions and foregrounds. In my talk I will discuss results from SPIDER’s 2015 flight, the 2022 Antarctic deployment, and the in-flight 280 GHz instrument and detector performance.

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