Joint Astrophysics Colloquium

Joint Astrophysics Seminar

Measuring the Polarized CMB with CAPMAP and QUIET

Keith Vanderlinde

University of Chicago

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) bears within it a wealth of information about the early universe. Observations of its temperature fluctuations revolutionized our understanding of the universe, and over the past 5 years, several experiments have begun to probe its faint polarization anisotropies.

I will discuss one such experiment, the Cosmic Anisotropy Polarization MAPper (CAPMAP), and the observations it made between late 2004 and mid 2005 in pursuit of E-mode (curl-free) polarization anisotropies.

I will also discuss the successor to CAPMAP, the Q/U Imaging ExperimenT (QUIET), which will deploy in early 2008 to Chajnantor, Chile. With a large array of miniaturized correlation polarimeters, QUIET aims to accurately characterize E-mode anisotropies, as well as detect the much fainter B-mode (divergence-free) anisotropies.