Mission Design of LiteBIRD

Abstract

LiteBIRD is a next-generation satellite mission to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. On large angular scales the B-mode polarization of the CMB carries the imprint of primordial gravitational waves, and its precise measurement would provide a powerful probe of the epoch of inflation. The goal of LiteBIRD is to achieve a measurement of the characterizing tensor to scalar ratio r to an uncertainty of δr = 0.001. In order to achieve this goal we will employ a kilopixel superconducting detector array on a cryogenically cooled sub-Kelvin focal plane with an optical system at a temperature of 4 K. We are currently considering two detector array options; transition edge sensor (TES) bolometers and microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKID). In this paper we give an overview of LiteBIRD and describe a TES-based polarimeter designed to achieve the target sensitivity of 2 µK·arcmin over the frequency range 50 to 320 GHz.

Forecasting sensitivity on tilt of power spectrum of primordial gravitational waves after Planck satellite

“…By considering the BKP constraint on r, we see that it is impossible for these future experiments to test the consistent relation n t = −r/8 in the canonical single-field slow-roll inflation models. Table 5: Instrumental specifications of future ground-based, balloon-borne and satellite experiments [32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41]. Here δP = σ pix θ F W HM .…”

Inflation and String Theory

“…Future galaxy surveys [151] may reduce the error on n s by a factor of 5. At the same time, future CMB polarization experiments [26,[152][153][154][155] have the potential to reduce the error on r to the percent level.…”

Loop Corrections to Standard Model fields in inflation

“…On top of that, the measurements of inflation observables through CMB or large scale structures have achieved impressive precision [4], and the precision will be further increased in the foreseeable future [5][6][7][8]. Based on this observation, it has been proposed recently that inflation can be used as a probe of the particle mass and spin spectra of new physics at high energies [9][10][11][12][13][14], and for this reason it is dubbed the "cosmological collider" by Arkani-Hamed and Maldacena [11].…”