Design and performance of wide-band corrugated walls for the BICEP Array detector modules at 30/40 GHz

TL;DR

This paper presents the design and simulation of wide-band corrugated walls for BICEP Array detector modules at 30/40 GHz, aiming to reduce beam systematics and improve measurement accuracy of CMB polarization.

Contribution

It introduces a novel corrugation design in the detector module's metal frame to suppress beam distortions and residual systematics in wide-band CMB observations.

Findings

Corrugation design reduces beam differential ellipticity to about 7%.

Simulations show effective suppression of unwanted antenna interactions.

Initial lab measurements support the simulation results.

Abstract

BICEP Array is a degree-scale Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiment that will search for primordial B-mode polarization while constraining Galactic foregrounds. BICEP Array will be comprised of four receivers to cover a broad frequency range with channels at 30/40, 95, 150 and 220/270 GHz. The first low-frequency receiver will map synchrotron emission at 30 and 40 GHz and will deploy to the South Pole at the end of 2019. In this paper, we give an overview of the BICEP Array science and instrument, with a focus on the detector module. We designed corrugations in the metal frame of the module to suppress unwanted interactions with the antenna-coupled detectors that would otherwise deform the beams of edge pixels. This design reduces the residual beam systematics and temperature-to-polarization leakage due to beam steering and shape mismatch between polarized beam pairs. We report on the simulated performance of single- and wide-band corrugations designed to minimize these effects. Our optimized design alleviates beam differential ellipticity caused by the metal frame to about 7% over 57% bandwidth (25 to 45 GHz), which is close to the level due the bare antenna itself without a metal frame. Initial laboratory measurements are also presented.