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Free keywords:
Astrophysics, Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, astro-ph.IM,Astrophysics, Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics, astro-ph.CO
Abstract:
We report on the design and performance of the BICEP3 instrument and its
first three-year data set collected from 2016 to 2018. BICEP3 is a 52cm
aperture, refracting telescope designed to observe the polarization of the
cosmic microwave background (CMB) on degree angular scales at 95GHz. It started
science observation at the South Pole in 2016 with 2400 antenna-coupled
transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers. The receiver first demonstrated new
technologies such as large-diameter alumina optics, Zotefoam infrared filters,
and flux-activated SQUIDs, allowing $\sim 10\times$ higher optical throughput
compared to the Keck design. BICEP3 achieved instrument noise-equivalent
temperatures of 9.2, 6.8 and 7.1$\mu\text{K}_{\text{CMB}}\sqrt{\text{s}}$ and
reached Stokes $Q$ and $U$ map depths of 5.9, 4.4 and 4.4$\mu$K-arcmin in 2016,
2017 and 2018, respectively. The combined three-year data set achieved a
polarization map depth of 2.8$\mu$K-arcmin over an effective area of 585 square
degrees, which is the deepest CMB polarization map made to date at 95GHz.
