Paper 13094-183
Instrument overview of Taurus: a balloon-borne CMB and dust polarization experiment
Abstract
Taurus is a balloon-borne cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment optimized to map the E-mode polarization and Galactic foregrounds at the largest angular scales (𝓁 < 30) and improve measurements of the optical depth to reionization (τ). This will pave the way for improved measurements of the sum of neutrino masses in combination with high-resolution CMB data while also testing the ΛCDM model on large angular scales and providing high-frequency maps of polarized dust foregrounds to the CMB community. These measurements take advantage of the low-loading environment found in the stratosphere and are enabled by NASA’s superpressure balloon platform, which provides access to 70% of the sky with a launch from Wanaka, New Zealand. Here we describe a general overview of Taurus, with an emphasis on the instrument design. Taurus will employ more than 10,000 100mK transition edge sensor bolometers distributed across two low-frequency (150, 220GHz) and one high-frequency (280, 350GHz) dichroic receivers. The liquid helium cryostat housing the detectors and optics is supported by a lightweight gondola. The payload is designed to meet the challenges in mass, power, and thermal control posed by the super-pressure platform. The instrument and scan strategy are optimized for rigorous control of instrumental systematics, enabling high-fidelity linear polarization measurements on the largest angular scales.
Presenter
Jared May
Case Western Reserve Univ. (United States)
Jared May is a Ph.D. candidate in Physics at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Cleveland, Ohio. His efforts are primarily in the development of the Taurus instrument, and he is also a member of the SPIDER II collaboration, which had a successful Antarctic launch campaign in 2022. He earned a B.S.E in Engineering Physics with a concentration in solid-state electrical engineering and a minor in astronomy at CWRU in 2021 and an M.A. in Physics at Washington University in Saint Louis in 2023.
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