Speaker
Jon Gudmundsson
(Stockholm University, Sweden)
Description
SPIDER is a balloon-borne experiment designed to image the polarization of the cosmic microwave background with the aim of constraining models of the early universe. The experiment performed successfully during a 17 day flight in the 2014-2015 Antarctic season. During this first flight, SPIDER deployed a total of 2000 detectors, operating at 94 and 150 GHz, to map approximately 10% of the sky in the Southern Galactic Hemisphere. The dataset generated during this first flight should help provide the electromagnetic, spatial, and angular constraints required to characterize the B-mode signal properties. We will briefly review the instrument design, discuss flight performance, and describe early analysis results. We will conclude with plans for a subsequent flight of the SPIDER payload.
