English

Designs for a large-aperture telescope to map the CMB 10X faster

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics 2016-04-20 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

Current large-aperture cosmic microwave background (CMB) telescopes have nearly maximized the number of detectors that can be illuminated while maintaining diffraction-limited image quality. The polarization-sensitive detector arrays being deployed in these telescopes in the next few years will have roughly 10410^4 detectors. Increasing the mapping speed of future instruments by at least an order of magnitude is important to enable precise probes of the inflationary paradigm in the first fraction of a second after the big bang and provide strong constraints on cosmological parameters. The CMB community has begun planning a next generation "Stage IV" CMB project that will be comprised of multiple telescopes with between 10510^5 - 10610^6 detectors to pursue these goals. This paper introduces new crossed Dragone telescope and receiver optics designs that increase the usable diffraction-limited field-of-view, and therefore the mapping speed, by an order of magnitude compared to the upcoming generation of large-aperture instruments. Polarization systematics and engineering considerations are presented, including a preliminary receiver model to demonstrate that these designs will enable high efficiency illumination of >105>10^5 detectors in a next generation CMB telescope.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1511.04506,
  title  = {Designs for a large-aperture telescope to map the CMB 10X faster},
  author = {Michael D. Niemack},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1511.04506},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

9 pages, 7 figures, to be published in Applied Optics