The SPIDER experiment: Instrument review, flight performance, and preliminary results
SPIDER is a balloon-borne experiment designed to image the polarization of the cosmic microwave background with the aim of constraining models of the early universe, including the inflationary paradigm. The experiment operated successfully during a 17 day flight in the 2014-2015 Antarctic season, deploying a total of 2000 detectors at 94 and 150 GHz to map approximately 10% of the Southern Galactic Hemisphere. The dataset generated during this flight should help provide the electromagnetic, spatial, and angular constraints required to characterize the B-mode signal properties. After motivating the science goals, we will review the instrument design, discuss flight performance, and describe early analysis results as well as plans for a subsequent flight of the SPIDER payload.