Development of large radii half-wave plates for CMB satellite missions

Understand

The successful European Space Agency (ESA) Planck mission has mapped the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropy with unprecedented accuracy.

• However, Planck was not designed to detect the polarised components of the CMB with comparable precision.
• The BICEP2 collaboration has recently reported the first detection of the B-mode polarisation.
• ESA is funding the development of critical enabling technologies associated with B-mode polarisation detection, one of these being large diameter half-wave plates.