The LiteBIRD mission to explore cosmic inflation

Understand

LiteBIRD, the next-generation cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment, aims for a launch in Japan's fiscal year 2032, marking a major advancement in the exploration of primordial cosmology and fundamental physics.

• Orbiting the Sun-Earth Lagrangian point L2, this JAXA-led strategic L-class mission will conduct a comprehensive mapping of the CMB polarization across the entire sky.
• During its 3-year mission, LiteBIRD will employ three telescopes within 15 unique frequency bands (ranging from 34 through 448 GHz), targeting a sensitivity of 2.2\,$\mu$K-arcmin and a resolution of 0.5$^\circ$ at 100\,GHz.
• Its primary goal is to measure the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ with an uncertainty $\delta r = 0.001$, including systematic errors and margin.