MAXIMA: Millimeter-wave anisotropy experiment imaging array.

We discuss the status of the data obtained from the first two flights of the MAXIMA balloon-borne experiment. MAXIMA is sensitive to CMB fluctuations on angular scales from 10 arcmin to 5 degrees. The instrument uses a 16 element bolometric array with 3 frequency bands centered at 150, 240, and 410 GHz. An angular power spectrum of the CMB anisotropy has been obtained from the data of the first flight, MAXIMA-1, which shows a peak at ℓ ∼ 220 of 78 ± 6μK and an amplitude varying between 40 μK and 50 μK from 400 < ℓ < 785 [1]. During a second flight (MAXIMA-2), in 1999, we mapped an additional 225 square degree region of the sky, nearly twice the area of MAXIMA-1. Data from MAXIMA-1 are consistent with adiabatic inflationary models with the total energy density, Ω = 1.0[SUP+0.15,SUB-0.3], the total baryon density, Ω[SUBb]h[SUP2] = 0.03 ± 0.01, and the spectral index of the initial power spectrum, n[SUBs] = 1.08 ± 0.1 [2]. Limits are quoted at the 95% confidence level. Data from MAXIMA have been combined with those from LSS observations, SNIa observations, COBE, and BOOMERanG, and have been used for cosmological parameter estimation [3]. MAXIMA data can be obtained at http://cfpa.berkeley.edu/maxima. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]