Circular Polarization Survey Results of the CLASS Telescope

POSTER

Abstract

There are several predictions for the circularly polarized (Stokes V) emission of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), but few experimental constraints have been made. The Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) is conducting a multi-frequency CMB polarization survey covering 75\% of the sky. Though its primary goal is measuring CMB linear polarization, CLASS also has explicit sensitivity to circular polarization due to its Variable-delay Polarization Modulator (VPM) technology. With this sensitivity, we are able to present new constraints on circular polarization.

*We acknowledge the National Science Foundation Division of Astronomical Sciences for their support of CLASS under Grant Numbers 0959349, 1429236, 1636634, and 1654494. The CLASS project employs detector technology developed under several previous and ongoing NASA grants. Detector development work at JHU was funded by NASA grant number NNX14AB76A. Data analysis for CLASS is conducted using computational resources at the Maryland Advanced Research Computing Center (MARCC). We further acknowledge the very generous support of Jim and Heather Murren (JHU A&S ’88), Matthew Polk (JHU A&S Physics BS ’71), David Nicholson, and Michael Bloomberg (JHU Engineering ’64). CLASS is located in the Parque Astronómica Atacama in northern Chile under the auspices of the Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica de Chile (CONICYT).

Authors

  • Saianeesh Haridas

    • Johns Hopkins University