The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is a unique and powerful tool for the study of cosmology and fundamental physics. The next frontier of CMB research is to extract the wealth of cosmological information available from its polarization. Accurate measurement of this polarization signal will enable us to probe inflation, provide an alternative means to measure the neutrino mass sum and number of neutrino species; improve our understanding of dark energy; explore the reionization history of our Universe; probe the large scale structure through gravitational lensing; and enable a multitude of other astrophysical studies. The polarized signatures of the early universe are extremely weak, dominated by foregrounds, and its measurement is susceptible to instrumental effects. Extracting the information contained in these faint signals requires instruments with high sensitivity, excellent control over systematic errors, and careful data analysis.
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter (ACTPol) is a state-of-the-art experiment that measures CMB polarization over finer angular scales from the Atacama desert in Chile. In this thesis, I present an overview of this project and then describe my work on the project including development of a new polarization sensitive dichroic camera for ACTPol designed to increase the sensitivity of CMB telescopes and enable high precision measurements of CMB polarization; the development of novel metamaterial antireflection coatings for silicon lenses; diffraction from panel gaps; calibration of detector pass-bands; and a detailed description of my analysis of the polarization properties of extragalactic point sources discovered with the ACTPol data. I conclude with a discussion of the science of ACTPol, and the impact of my technical work on future CMB experiments.PHDPhysicsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135767/1/dattar_1.pd
