We describe the objectives, design and predicted performance of Clover, which
is a ground-based experiment to measure the faint ``B-mode'' polarisation
pattern in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). To achieve this goal, clover
will make polarimetric observations of approximately 1000 deg^2 of the sky in
spectral bands centred on 97, 150 and 225 GHz. The observations will be made
with a two-mirror compact range antenna fed by profiled corrugated horns. The
telescope beam sizes for each band are 7.5, 5.5 and 5.5 arcmin, respectively.
The polarisation of the sky will be measured with a rotating half-wave plate
and stationary analyser, which will be an orthomode transducer. The sky
coverage combined with the angular resolution will allow us to measure the
angular power spectra between 20 < l < 1000. Each frequency band will employ
192 single polarisation, photon noise limited TES bolometers cooled to 100 mK.
The background-limited sensitivity of these detector arrays will allow us to
constrain the tensor-to-scalar ratio to 0.026 at 3sigma, assuming any polarised
foreground signals can be subtracted with minimal degradation to the 150 GHz
sensitivity. Systematic errors will be mitigated by modulating the polarisation
of the sky signals with the rotating half-wave plate, fast azimuth scans and
periodic telescope rotations about its boresight. The three spectral bands will
be divided into two separate but nearly identical instruments - one for 97 GHz
and another for 150 and 225 GHz. The two instruments will be sited on identical
three-axis mounts in the Atacama Desert in Chile near Pampa la Bola.
Observations are expected to begin in late 2009.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. To appear in the proceedings of the XXXXIIIrd
Rencontres de Moriond "Cosmology". Figure 1 update