The half wave plate rotator for the BLAST-TNG balloon-borne telescope

The Next Generation Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST-TNG) is an experiment designed to map magnetic fields in molecular clouds in order to study their role in the star formation process. The telescope will be launched aboard a high-altitude balloon in December 2016 for a 4-week flight from McMurdo station in Antarctica. BLAST-TNG will measure the polarization of submillimeter thermal emission from magnetically aligned interstellar dust grains, using large format arrays of kinetic inductance detectors operating in three bands centered at 250, 350, and 500 microns, with sub-arcminute angular resolution. The optical system includes an achromatic Half Wave Plate (HWP), mounted in a Half Wave Plate rotator (HWPr). The HWP and HWPr will operate at 4 K temperature to reduce thermal noise in our measurements, so it was crucial to account for the effects of thermal contraction at low temperature in the HWPr design. It was also equally important for the design to meet torque requirements while minimizing the power from friction and conduction dissipated at the 4 K stage. We also discuss our plan for cold testing the HWPr using a repurposed cryostat with a Silicon Diode thermometer read out by an EDAS-CE Ethernet data acquisition system.