Integration and Analysis of the Balloon-borne Telescope, SPIDER

Abstract

Since the discovery of cosmic microwave background(CMB) in 1965, the cosmological information encoded in it has motivated many ground and space observation programs to attempt to exploit its scientific potential. SPIDER is a balloon-borne telescope designed in particular to map the polarization pattern of the CMB at degree angular scales.SPIDER’s science instruments consist of 6 independent telescopes, operating at 94 and 150 GHz (SPIDER-1), with the second flight augmented by a suite of 285 GHz receivers (SPIDER-2). The cosmological results from SPIDER-1 were published in 2021, including a limit on the cosmological B-mode detection using the XFaster power spectrum estimator as its main pipeline. The second flight of SPIDER is being characterized at Princeton University while waiting for a launch opportunity from Antarctica. This thesis includes an introduction of CMB polarization, the SPIDER program, and the data analysis and result of SPIDER-1 in Chapter 1. We derive 95% upper limits on the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio r from Feldman-Cousins and Bayesian constructions, finding r < 0.11 and r < 0.19 respectively. Following the results from SPIDER-1, Chapter 2 focuses on the XFaster spectrum estimator that was used as SPIDER’s main analysis pipeline and the SPIDER-1 consistency tests performed using this estimator. SPIDER-1 passes the outlier and distribution null test in two frequencies using 500 end-to-end simulations, with a PTE value of 0.78 and 0.56 respectively for the case of the combined frequencies. The details of the SPIDER-2 cryogenic system and operation are in Chapter 3, while the 280 GHz telescope integration and characterization are introduced in Chapter 4. New data at 280 GHz from this second flight will complement the first flight, providing archival measurements of the polarized Galactic dust emission.