The Bicep experiment was designed specifically to search for the signature of inflationary gravitational waves in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background ( CMB ) .
Using a novel small-aperture refractor and 49 pairs of polarization-sensitive bolometers , Bicep has completed 3 years of successful observations at the South Pole beginning in 2006 February .
To constrain the amplitude of the inflationary B -mode polarization , which is expected to be at least 7 orders of magnitude fainter than the 3 K CMB intensity , precise control of systematic effects is essential .
This paper describes the characterization of potential systematic errors for the Bicep experiment , supplementing a companion paper on the initial cosmological results .
Using the analysis pipelines for the experiment , we have simulated the impact of systematic errors on the B -mode polarization measurement .
Guided by these simulations , we have established benchmarks for the characterization of critical instrumental properties including bolometer relative gains , beam mismatch , polarization orientation , telescope pointing , sidelobes , thermal stability , and timestream noise model .
A comparison of the benchmarks with the measured values shows that we have characterized the instrument adequately to ensure that systematic errors do not limit Bicep ’ s 2-year results , and identifies which future refinements are likely necessary to probe inflationary B -mode polarization down to levels below a tensor-to-scalar ratio r = 0.1 .