UC San Diego

Numerous experiments in the last two decades have shown that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a powerful cosmological probe. The temperature anisotropy of the CMB has now been mapped to exquisite precision by many experiments, yielding tight constraints on the standard LCDM cosmological model. Many current and upcoming experiments focus on measuring CMB polarization, in particular the B-mode polarization, which potentially encodes information from long before the epoch of matter- radiation decoupling. However, the magnitude of the inflationary B-mode signal is constrained by an upper limit of tens of nK, which represents a massive experimental challenge. Foreground contamination and systematic effects, among other factors, further increase the difficulty of detection. A measurement of this signal therefore requires the development of dedicated telescopes with exquisite control of systematics and large kilo-pixel arrays of background limited detectors. This thesis describes my work on Cosmic Microwave Background polarization studies. Specifically, it describes my data analysis efforts on two CMB polarization telescopes, BICEP and POLARBEAR, my contribution to hardware efforts on POLARBEAR, and my design and fabrication work on next generation detector arrays