PIQUE: Princeton I
Q U Experiment
The PIQUE experiment made observations of the CMB polarization from
the roof of the physics department,
in Princeton, NJ in the winters of 1999-2000, and 2000-2001, using a W-band
HEMT-based correlation polarimeter.
Below are two pictures of the PIQUE experiment with part of the
group (Denis Barkats, Suzanne Staggs, Jeff McMahon, and Matt Hedman) in
front of the ground screen, and of the instrument inside the ground
screens. In the second, the 1.2~m parabolic mirror is on the
left and
the cryostat is buried in the aluminum frame on the right. Not shown
here
are Bruce Winstein, Josh Gundersen, and numerous undergraduate students.
The PIQUE picture archive is online
The results from PIQUE are published in three papers:
-"A Limit
on the Polarized Anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave
Background at Subdegree Angular Scales"
Hedman, Barkats, Gundersen, Staggs,
Winstein, Astrophys.J. 548 (2001) L111-L114
-"New Limits
on the Polarized Anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background
at Subdegree Angular Scales"
Hedman, Barkats, Gundersen, McMahon,
Staggs, Winstein, submitted to Astrophysical Journal
Letters
-"First attempt at measuring
the CMB cross-polarization"
de Oliveira-Costa, Tegmark, Zaldarriaga,
Barkats, Gundersen, Hedman, Staggs & Winstein 2002,
Submitted to Phys. Rev. D.
and a more detailed description can be found in Matt
Hedman's Ph.D thesis, "The
Princeton IQU experiment and constraints on the
Polarization of the CMB at 90 GHz". A more complete
publication list is available here.
PIQUE has been replaced by a new experiement; CAPMAP. More information about
this experiment is on the CAPMAP web site
page last updated by D. Barkats, May, 4 2004.
