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BFORE: The B-mode Foreground Experiment

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Abstract

The B-mode Foreground Experiment (BFORE) is a proposed NASA balloon project designed to make optimal use of the sub-orbital platform by concentrating on three dust foreground bands (270, 350, and 600 GHz) that complement ground-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) programs. BFORE will survey \(\sim \)1/4 of the sky with 1.7–3.7 arcminute resolution, enabling precise characterization of the Galactic dust that now limits constraints on inflation from CMB B-mode polarization measurements. In addition, BFORE’s combination of frequency coverage, large survey area, and angular resolution enables science far beyond the critical goal of measuring foregrounds. BFORE will constrain the velocities of thousands of galaxy clusters, provide a new window on the cosmic infrared background, and probe magnetic fields in the interstellar medium. We review the BFORE science case, timeline, and instrument design, which is based on a compact off-axis telescope coupled to \({>}10,000\) superconducting detectors.

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Acknowledgments

The development of multichroic detectors and lenses was supported by NASA Grants NNX13AE56G and NNX14AB58G.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Michael D. Niemack, Francesco de Bernardis & Shawn Henderson

  2. School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF24 3AA, UK

    Peter Ade, Steve Eales, Haley Gomez, Enzo Pascale, Giampaolo Pisano & Carole Tucker

  3. Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale, CNRS Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France

    Francois Boulanger, Marc-Antoine Miville-Deschênes & Juan Soler

  4. School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Sean Bryan, Chris Groppi & Philip Mauskopf

  5. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Mark Devlin

  6. Department of Astrophysics, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3RH, UK

    Joanna Dunkley

  7. Department of Physics and Astronomy, California State University, Sacramento, CA, USA

    Seth Hillbrand

  8. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, CO, USA

    Johannes Hubmayr

  9. Department of Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Jeff McMahon

  10. Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Giles Novak

  11. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

    Douglas Scott

Authors
  1. Michael D. Niemack
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  2. Peter Ade
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  3. Francesco de Bernardis
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  4. Francois Boulanger
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  5. Sean Bryan
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  6. Mark Devlin
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  8. Steve Eales
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  9. Haley Gomez
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  10. Chris Groppi
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  11. Shawn Henderson
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  12. Seth Hillbrand
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  13. Johannes Hubmayr
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  14. Philip Mauskopf
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  15. Jeff McMahon
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  16. Marc-Antoine Miville-Deschênes
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  17. Enzo Pascale
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  18. Giampaolo Pisano
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  19. Giles Novak
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  20. Douglas Scott
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  21. Juan Soler
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  22. Carole Tucker
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael D. Niemack.

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Niemack, M.D., Ade, P., de Bernardis, F. et al. BFORE: The B-mode Foreground Experiment. J Low Temp Phys 184, 746–753 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-015-1395-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-015-1395-6

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