Detection of degree scale B-modes by BICEP/Keck

On March 17, 2014, our team announced a detection of degree-scale B-mode polarization using the BICEP-1, BICEP-2, and (preliminarily) Keck Array cameras. I gave a plenary talk on this discovery at the 2014 International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP), which you can check out here:

(there's a non-technical version of this talk for a general audience linked through the Outreach Tab of this webpage).

This achievement was made possible through a revolution in our detector technology over the past decade. Using thin-film photo-lithographic techniques, we have built a new generation of detectors that couple integrated millimeter-wave circuits to superconducting detectors. This technology has allowed us to aggressively increase the speed with which we map the sky at millimeter wavelengths. We subsequently deployed BICEP-3 telescope to begin 95GHz observations in the 2015 austral winter with similar detectors but at a different observing color and map the same fields as already mapped by its predecessor experiments, Keck and BICEP-2. We have also replaced the original 150GHz Keck Cameras with 220GHz and 270GHz cameras, all to control for galactic foregrounds These cameras' design and related detectors are highly scalable, and we will begin deploying BICEP Array in 2018. BICEP Array will have over 30,000 detectors split between several observing colors, including 30/40GHz to monitor synchrotron and 220/270GHz to monitor for Dust.