MAXIPOL Optics and Receiver



The telescope and sensitive receiver developed for MAXIMA, and shown above, will be at the heart of the MAXIPOL experiment. The MAXIMA receiver has an array of 16 bolometers cooled to 100 mK and the highest sensitivity for a CMB instrument reported to date. The noise equivalent temperature for a single 150 GHz channel has been measured in flight to be an unprecedented 90 [microKrtsec]. With all 150 GHz channels taken together the effective sensitivity of the receiver is 40 [microKrtsec]. Our flight-demonstrated sensitivity is sufficiently high that a 36 hour flight is comparable to 4-6 days of observation with a system that uses 300 mK bolometers.