SWIPE: a bolometric polarimeter for the Large-Scale Polarization
  Explorer
  The balloon-borne LSPE mission is optimized to measure the linear
polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background at large angular scales. The
Short Wavelength Instrument for the Polarization Explorer (SWIPE) is composed
of 3 arrays of multi-mode bolometers cooled at 0.3K, with optical components
and filters cryogenically cooled below 4K to reduce the background on the
detectors. Polarimetry is achieved by means of large rotating half-wave plates
and wire-grid polarizers in front of the arrays. The polarization modulator is
the first component of the optical chain, reducing significantly the effect of
instrumental polarization. In SWIPE we trade angular resolution for
sensitivity. The diameter of the entrance pupil of the refractive telescope is
45 cm, while the field optics is optimized to collect tens of modes for each
detector, thus boosting the absorbed power. This approach results in a FWHM
resolution of 1.8, 1.5, 1.2 degrees at 95, 145, 245 GHz respectively. The
expected performance of the three channels is limited by photon noise,
resulting in a final sensitivity around 0.1-0.2 uK per beam, for a 13 days
survey covering 25% of the sky.
