Princeton University/Institute for Advanced Study Early Universe/Cosmology Lunch Discussion

Organizers are David Spergel, Princeton University, and Matias Zaldarriaga, Institute for Advanced Study. The lunch will be held at either Princeton University or the Institute for Advanced Study. Check the calendar for the meeting location. This week's meeting is at the Institute for Advanced Study. Attendees can bring their own lunch or stop at the IAS Dining Hall. The West Seminar room is in a building which is a short walk from the main dining area. ABSTRACT: SPIDER is a balloon-borne polarimeter designed to characterize the primordial gravitational wave signal in the degree-scale B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). With six independent telescopes housing a total of 2000 detectors in the 90 GHz and 150 GHz frequency bands, SPIDER is poised to be the most sensitive CMB polarimeter on the sky to date. In this talk, I will discuss the system architecture and pre-flight status of the instrument and detectors. I will also present forecasts for SPIDER's December 2014 flight from McMurdo Station, Antarctica.