1. The White Mountain Polarimeter Telescope and an Upper Limit on CMB Polarization
- Author
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Levy, Alan R., Leonardi, Rodrigo, Ansmann, Markus, Bersanelli, Marco, Childers, Jeffery, Cole, Terrence D., D'Arcangelo, Ocleto, Davis, G. Vietor, Lubin, Philip M., Marvil, Joshua, Meinhold, Peter R., Miller, Gerald, O`Neill, Hugh, Stavola, Fabrizio, Stebor, Nathan C., Timbie, Peter T., van der Heide, Maarten, Villa, Fabrizio, Villela, Thyrso, Williams, Brian D., and Wuensche, Carlos A.
- Subjects
Astrophysics - Abstract
The White Mountain Polarimeter (WMPol) is a dedicated ground-based microwave telescope and receiver system for observing polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background. WMPol is located at an altitude of 3880 meters on a plateau in the White Mountains of Eastern California, USA, at the Barcroft Facility of the University of California White Mountain Research Station. Presented here is a description of the instrument and the data collected during April through October 2004. We set an upper limit on $E$-mode polarization of 14 $\mu\mathrm{K}$ (95% confidence limit) in the multipole range $170<\ell<240$. This result was obtained with 422 hours of observations of a 3 $\mathrm{deg}^2$ sky area about the North Celestial Pole, using a 42 GHz polarimeter. This upper limit is consistent with $EE$ polarization predicted from a standard $\Lambda$-CDM concordance model., Comment: 35 pages. 12 figures. To appear in ApJS
- Published
- 2008
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