Measuring Reionization, Neutrino Mass, and Cosmic Inflation with BFORE
  BFORE is a NASA high-altitude ultra-long-duration balloon mission proposed to
measure the cosmic microwave background (CMB) across half the sky during a
28-day mid-latitude flight launched from Wanaka, New Zealand. With the unique
access to large angular scales and high frequencies provided by the balloon
platform, BFORE will significantly improve measurements of the optical depth to
reionization tau, breaking parameter degeneracies needed for a measurement of
neutrino mass with the CMB. The large angular scale data will enable BFORE to
hunt for the large-scale gravitational wave B-mode signal, as well as the
degree-scale signal, each at the r~0.01 level. The balloon platform allows
BFORE to map Galactic dust foregrounds at frequencies where they dominate, in
order to robustly separate them from CMB signals measured by BFORE, in addition
to complementing data from ground-based telescopes. The combination of
frequencies will also lead to velocity measurements for thousands of galaxy
clusters, as well as probing how star-forming galaxies populate dark matter
halos. The mission will be the first near-space use of TES multichroic
detectors (150/217 GHz and 280/353 GHz bands) using highly-multiplexed mSQUID
microwave readout, raising the technical readiness level of both technologies.
