Measurements of Degree-Scale B-mode Polarization with the BICEP/Keck Experiments at South Pole

Understand

The BICEP and Keck Array experiments are a suite of small-aperture refracting telescopes observing the microwave sky from the South Pole.

• They target the degree-scale B-mode polarization signal imprinted in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) by primordial gravitational waves.
• Such a measurement would shed light on the physics of the very early universe.
• While BICEP2 observed for the first time a B-mode signal at 150 GHz, higher frequencies from the Planck satellite showed that it could be entirely due to the polarized emission from Galactic dust, though uncertainty remained high.