THE BIRTH PANGS OF THE BIG BANG IN THE LIGHT OF BICEP

BICEP is the first polarimeter developed to measure the inflationary B-mode polarization of the CMB. During three seasons of observing at the South Pole, Antarctica beginning in 2006, BICEP mapped 2% of the sky chosen to be clean of polarized foreground emission. I discuss initial results derived from a subset of the data acquired during the first two years and the unique design features of BICEP which led to the first meaningful limits on the tensor-to-scalar ratio to come from B-mode polarization alone. Over the coming decade, BICEP’s design and performance will influence future measurements of the inflationary gravitational wave background.