Software systems for operation, control, and monitoring of the EBEX instrument

Milligan, Michael; Aubin, F.; Baccigalupi, C.; Bao, Chaoyun; Borrill, J.; Cantalupo, C. M.; Chapman, David; Didier, Joy; Dobbs, M.; Grainger, William F.; Hanany, Shaul; Hillbrand, Seth; Hubmayr, Johannes; Hyland, P.; Jaffe, A. H.; Johnson, Bradley R.; Kisner, T. S.; Klein, Jeff; Korotkov, Andrei; Leach, S.; Lee, Adrian V.; Levinson, L. J.; Limon, M.; MacDermid, Kevin; Matsumura, Tomotake; Miller, Amber; Pascale, Enzo; Polsgrove, Daniel; Raach, Kate; Reichborn-Kjennerud, Britt; Sagiv, Ilan; Tran, Hung V.; Tucker, Gregory S.; Vinokurov, Yury; Yadav, Amit; Zaldarriaga, Matías; Zilic, Kyle

doi:10.1117/12.857583

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…A detailed overview of the instrument control, data logging and telemetry software and hardware is provided elsewhere in these proceedings. 5 The attitude control system (ACS) provides control of the gondola and telescope boresight pointing data. The ACS sensors planned for the long duration flight include a differential GPS system, a three-axis magnetometer, a sun sensor, a pair of redundant star cameras and two redundant sets of three orthogonally positioned fiberoptic rate gyroscopes.…”

Section: Gondola and Attitude Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

EBEX: a balloon-borne CMB polarization experiment

et al. 2010

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EBEX is a NASA-funded balloon-borne experiment designed to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Observations will be made using 1432 transition edge sensor (TES) bolometric detectors read out with frequency multiplexed SQuIDs. EBEX will observe in three frequency bands centered at 150, 250, and 410 GHz, with 768, 384, and 280 detectors in each band, respectively. This broad frequency coverage is designed to provide valuable information about polarized foreground signals from dust. The polarized sky signals will be modulated with an achromatic half wave plate (AHWP) rotating on a superconducting magnetic bearing (SMB) and analyzed with a fixed wire grid polarizer. EBEX will observe a patch covering ∼1% of the sky with 8' resolution, allowing for observation of the angular power spectrum from = 20 to 1000. This will allow EBEX to search for both the primordial B-mode signal predicted by inflation and the anticipated lensing B-mode signal. Calculations to predict EBEX constraints on r using expected noise levels show that, for a likelihood centered around zero and with negligible foregrounds, 99% of the area falls below r = 0.035. This value increases by a factor of 1.6 after a process of foreground subtraction. This estimate does not include systematic uncertainties. An engineering flight was launched in June, 2009, from Ft. Sumner, NM, and the long duration science flight in Antarctica is planned for 2011. These proceedings describe the EBEX instrument and the North American engineering flight.

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Section: Gondola and Attitude Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

EBEX: a balloon-borne CMB polarization experiment

et al. 2010

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“…Several other publications give additional details about the EBEX experiment. Some are from earlier stages of the program (Oxley et al 2004;Grainger et al 2008;Aubin et al 2010;Milligan et al 2010;Reichborn-Kjennerud et al 2010;Klein et al 2011;Sagiv et al 2012;Westbrook et al 2012), and others discuss some subsystems in more detail (Polsgrove 2009;Reichborn-Kjennerud 2010;Sagiv 2011;Aubin 2012;MacDermid 2014;MacDermid et al 2014;Westbrook 2014;Zilic 2014;Chapman 2015;Chapman et al 2015;Didier et al 2015;Aubin et al 2016;Didier 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The EBEX Balloon-borne Experiment—Optics, Receiver, and Polarimetry

Aboobaker

Ade

Araujo

et al. 2018

ApJS

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The E and B Experiment (EBEX) was a long-duration balloon-borne cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarimeter that flew over Antarctica in 2012. We describe the experiment's optical system, receiver, and polarimetric approach and report on their in-flight performance. EBEX had three frequency bands centered on 150, 250, and 410GHz. To make efficient use of limited mass and space, we designed a 115cm 2 sr highthroughput optical system that had two ambient temperature mirrors and four antireflection-coated polyethylene lenses per focal plane. All frequency bands shared the same optical train. Polarimetry was achieved with a continuously rotating achromatic half-wave plate (AHWP) that was levitated with a superconducting magnetic bearing (SMB). This is the first use of an SMB in astrophysics. Rotation stability was 0.45% over a period of 10 hr, and angular position accuracy was 0°. 01. The measured modulation efficiency was above 90% for all bands. To our knowledge the 109% fractional bandwidth of the AHWP was the broadest implemented to date. The receiver, composed of one lens and the AHWP at a temperature of 4K, the polarizing grid and other lenses at 1K, and the two focal planes at 0.25K, performed according to specifications, giving focal plane temperature stability with a fluctuation power spectrum that had a 1/f knee at 2mHz. EBEX was the first balloon-borne instrument to implement technologies characteristic of modern CMB polarimeters, including high-throughput optical systems, and large arrays of transition edge sensor bolometric detectors with multiplexed readouts.

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“…Several other publications give additional details about EBEX. Some are from earlier stages of the program (Oxley et al 2004;Grainger et al 2008;Hubmayr et al 2008;Aubin et al 2010;Milligan et al 2010;Reichborn-Kjennerud et al 2010;Klein et al 2011;Sagiv et al 2012;Westbrook et al 2012), and others discuss some subsystems in more detail (Polsgrove 2009;Sagiv 2011;Aubin 2012;MacDermid 2014;MacDermid et al 2014;Westbrook 2014;Zilic 2014;Chapman et al 2014Chapman et al , 2015Chapman 2015;Didier et al 2015;Didier 2016;Aubin et al 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The EBEX Balloon-borne Experiment—Detectors and Readout

Abitbol¹,

Aboobaker²,

Araujo³

et al. 2018

ApJS

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EBEX was a long-duration balloon-borne experiment to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background. The experiment had three frequency bands centered at 150, 250, and 410GHz and was the first to use a kilopixel array of transition edge sensor bolometers aboard a balloon platform. We describe the design and characterization of the array and the readout system. From the lowest to highest frequency, the median measured detectors' average thermal conductances were 39, 53, and 63pW/K, the medians of transition temperatures were 0.45, 0.48, and 0.47K, and the medians of normal resistances were 1.9, 1.5, and 1.4Ω; we also give the measured distributions. With the exception of the thermal conductance at 150GHz, all measured values are within 30% of their design. We measure median low-loop-gain time constants τ 0 = 88, 46, and 57ms. Two measurements of bolometer absorption efficiency gave results consistent within 10% and showing high (∼0.9) efficiency at 150GHz and medium (∼0.35 and ∼0.25) efficiency at the two higher bands. We measure a median total optical power absorbed of 3.6, 5.3, and 5.0pW. EBEX pioneered the use of the digital version of the frequency domain multiplexing system. We multiplexed the bias and readout of 16 bolometers onto two wires. The median per-detector noise-equivalent temperatures are 400, 920, and 14,500 mK s cmb. We compare these values to our preflight predictions and to a previous balloon payload. We discuss the sources of excess noise and the path for a future payload to make full use of the balloon environment.

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Software systems for operation, control, and monitoring of the EBEX instrument

Cited by 7 publications

References 20 publications

EBEX: a balloon-borne CMB polarization experiment

EBEX: a balloon-borne CMB polarization experiment

The EBEX Balloon-borne Experiment—Optics, Receiver, and Polarimetry

The EBEX Balloon-borne Experiment—Detectors and Readout

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