The Cosmic Foreground Explorer (COFE): A balloon-borne microwave polarimeter to characterize polarized foregrounds

摘要

The COsmic Foreground Explorer (COFE) is a balloon-borne microwave polarime-ter designed to measure the low-frequency and low-l characteristics of dominantdiffuse polarized foregrounds. Short duration balloon flights from the Northernand Southern Hemispheres will allow the telescope to cover up to 80% of the skywith an expected sensitivity per pixel better than 100 $\mu K / deg^2$ from 10GHz to 20 GHz. This is an important effort toward characterizing the polarizedforegrounds for future CMB experiments, in particular the ones that aim todetect primordial gravity wave signatures in the CMB polarization angular powerspectrum.