Archeops: an instrument for present and future cosmology

Abstract

Archeops is a balloon-borne instrument dedicated to measure the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies. It has, in the millimetre domain (from 143 to 545 GHz), a high angular resolution (about 10 arcminutes) in order to constrain high l multipoles, as well as a large sky coverage fraction (30%) in order to minimize the cosmic variance. It has linked, before WMAP, Cobe large angular scales to the first acoustic peak region. From its results, inflation motivated cosmologies are reinforced with a flat Universe (Omega_tot=1 within 3%). The dark energy density and the baryonic density are in very good agreement with other independent estimations based on supernovae measurements and big bang nucleosynthesis. Important results on galactic dust emission polarization and their implications for Planck are also addressed.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Proceedings of the Multiwavelength Cosmology Conference, June 2003, Mykonos Island, Greec