QUBIC - The Q&U Bolometric Interferometer for Cosmology - A novel way to look at the polarized Cosmic Microwave Background

TL;DR

QUBIC is a novel bolometric interferometer designed to detect primordial gravitational waves through polarized CMB measurements, combining high sensitivity with systematic effect control via self-calibration.

Contribution

It introduces a new interferometric approach that merges bolometric sensitivity with systematic effect mitigation for CMB polarization studies.

Findings

Design of QUBIC instrument with dual-band capabilities

Implementation of self-calibration technique for data cleaning

Deployment planned in Argentina in Fall 2018

Abstract

In this paper we describe QUBIC, an experiment that takes up the challenge posed by the detection of primordial gravitational waves with a novel approach, that combines the sensitivity of state-of-the art bolometric detectors with the systematic effects control typical of interferometers. The so-called "self-calibration" is a technique deeply rooted in the interferometric nature of the instrument and allows us to clean the measured data from instrumental effects. The first module of QUBIC is a dual band instrument (150 GHz and 220 GHz) that will be deployed in Argentina during the Fall 2018.