Detector fabrication development for the LiteBIRD satellite mission
  LiteBIRD is a JAXA-led strategic Large-Class satellite mission designed to
measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background and cosmic
foregrounds from 34 to 448 GHz across the entire sky from L2 in the late
2020's. The primary focus of the mission is to measure primordially generated
B-mode polarization at large angular scales. Beyond its primary scientific
objective LiteBIRD will generate a data-set capable of probing a number of
scientific inquiries including the sum of neutrino masses. The primary
responsibility of United States will be to fabricate the three flight model
focal plane units for the mission. The design and fabrication of these focal
plane units is driven by heritage from ground based experiments and will
include both lenslet-coupled sinuous antenna pixels and horn-coupled orthomode
transducer pixels. The experiment will have three optical telescopes called the
low frequency telescope, mid frequency telescope, and high frequency telescope
each of which covers a portion of the mission's frequency range. JAXA is
responsible for the construction of the low frequency telescope and the
European Consortium is responsible for the mid- and high- frequency telescopes.
The broad frequency coverage and low optical loading conditions, made possible
by the space environment, require development and adaptation of detector
technology recently deployed by other cosmic microwave background experiments.
This design, fabrication, and characterization will take place at UC Berkeley,
NIST, Stanford, and Colorado University, Boulder. We present the current status
of the US deliverables to the LiteBIRD mission.
