The Simons Observatory: Astro2020 Decadal Project Whitepaper
Abstract
The Simons Observatory (SO) is a ground-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment sited on Cerro Toco in the Atacama Desert in Chile that promises to provide breakthrough discoveries in fundamental physics, cosmology, and astrophysics. Supported by the Simons Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and with contributions from collaborating institutions, SO will see first light in 2021 and start a five year survey in 2022. SO has 287 collaborators from 12 countries and 53 institutions, including 85 students and 90 postdocs. The SO experiment in its currently funded form ('SO-Nominal') consists of three 0.4 m Small Aperture Telescopes (SATs) and one 6 m Large Aperture Telescope (LAT). Optimized for minimizing systematic errors in polarization measurements at large angular scales, the SATs will perform a deep, degree-scale survey of 10% of the sky to search for the signature of primordial gravitational waves. The LAT will survey 40% of the sky with arc-minute resolution. These observations will measure (or limit) the sum of neutrino masses, search for light relics, measure the early behavior of Dark Energy, and refine our understanding of the intergalactic medium, clusters and the role of feedback in galaxy formation. With up to ten times the sensitivity and five times the angular resolution of the Planck satellite, and roughly an order of magnitude increase in mapping speed over currently operating ("Stage 3") experiments, SO will measure the CMB temperature and polarization fluctuations to exquisite precision in six frequency bands from 27 to 280 GHz. SO will rapidly advance CMB science while informing the design of future observatories such as CMB-S4.
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Cite
@article{arxiv.1907.08284,
title = {The Simons Observatory: Astro2020 Decadal Project Whitepaper},
author = {The Simons Observatory Collaboration and Maximilian H. Abitbol and Shunsuke Adachi and Peter Ade and James Aguirre and Zeeshan Ahmed and Simone Aiola and Aamir Ali and David Alonso and Marcelo A. Alvarez and Kam Arnold and Peter Ashton and Zachary Atkins and Jason Austermann and Humna Awan and Carlo Baccigalupi and Taylor Baildon and Anton Baleato Lizancos and Darcy Barron and Nick Battaglia and Richard Battye and Eric Baxter and Andrew Bazarko and James A. Beall and Rachel Bean and Dominic Beck and Shawn Beckman and Benjamin Beringue and Tanay Bhandarkar and Sanah Bhimani and Federico Bianchini and Steven Boada and David Boettger and Boris Bolliet and J. Richard Bond and Julian Borrill and Michael L. Brown and Sarah Marie Bruno and Sean Bryan and Erminia Calabrese and Victoria Calafut and Paolo Calisse and Julien Carron and Fred. M Carl and Juan Cayuso and Anthony Challinor and Grace Chesmore and Yuji Chinone and Jens Chluba and Hsiao-Mei Sherry Cho and Steve Choi and Susan Clark and Philip Clarke and Carlo Contaldi and Gabriele Coppi and Nicholas F. Cothard and Kevin Coughlin and Will Coulton and Devin Crichton and Kevin D. Crowley and Kevin T. Crowley and Ari Cukierman and John M. D'Ewart and Rolando Dünner and Tijmen de Haan and Mark Devlin and Simon Dicker and Bradley Dober and Cody J. Duell and Shannon Duff and Adri Duivenvoorden and Jo Dunkley and Hamza El Bouhargani and Josquin Errard and Giulio Fabbian and Stephen Feeney and James Fergusson and Simone Ferraro and Pedro Fluxà and Katherine Freese and Josef C. Frisch and Andrei Frolov and George Fuller and Nicholas Galitzki and Patricio A. Gallardo and Jose Tomas Galvez Ghersi and Jiansong Gao and Eric Gawiser and Martina Gerbino and Vera Gluscevic and Neil Goeckner-Wald and Joseph Golec and Sam Gordon and Megan Gralla and Daniel Green and Arpi Grigorian and John Groh and Chris Groppi and Yilun Guan and Jon E. Gudmundsson and Mark Halpern and Dongwon Han and Peter Hargrave and Kathleen Harrington and Masaya Hasegawa and Matthew Hasselfield and Makoto Hattori and Victor Haynes and Masashi Hazumi and Erin Healy and Shawn W. Henderson and Brandon Hensley and Carlos Hervias-Caimapo and Charles A. Hill and J. Colin Hill and Gene Hilton and Matt Hilton and Adam D. Hincks and Gary Hinshaw and Renée Hložek and Shirley Ho and Shuay-Pwu Patty Ho and Thuong D. Hoang and Jonathan Hoh and Selim C. Hotinli and Zhiqi Huang and Johannes Hubmayr and Kevin Huffenberger and John P. Hughes and Anna Ijjas and Margaret Ikape and Kent Irwin and Andrew H. Jaffe and Bhuvnesh Jain and Oliver Jeong and Matthew Johnson and Daisuke Kaneko and Ethan D. Karpel and Nobuhiko Katayama and Brian Keating and Reijo Keskitalo and Theodore Kisner and Kenji Kiuchi and Jeff Klein and Kenda Knowles and Anna Kofman and Brian Koopman and Arthur Kosowsky and Nicoletta Krachmalnicoff and Akito Kusaka and Phil LaPlante and Jacob Lashner and Adrian Lee and Eunseong Lee and Antony Lewis and Yaqiong Li and Zack Li and Michele Limon and Eric Linder and Jia Liu and Carlos Lopez-Caraballo and Thibaut Louis and Marius Lungu and Mathew Madhavacheril and Daisy Mak and Felipe Maldonado and Hamdi Mani and Ben Mates and Frederick Matsuda and Loïc Maurin and Phil Mauskopf and Andrew May and Nialh McCallum and Heather McCarrick and Chris McKenney and Jeff McMahon and P. Daniel Meerburg and James Mertens and Joel Meyers and Amber Miller and Mark Mirmelstein and Kavilan Moodley and Jenna Moore and Moritz Munchmeyer and Charles Munson and Masaaki Murata and Sigurd Naess and Toshiya Namikawa and Federico Nati and Martin Navaroli and Laura Newburgh and Ho Nam Nguyen and Andrina Nicola and Mike Niemack and Haruki Nishino and Yume Nishinomiya and John Orlowski-Scherer and Luca Pagano and Bruce Partridge and Francesca Perrotta and Phumlani Phakathi and Lucio Piccirillo and Elena Pierpaoli and Giampaolo Pisano and Davide Poletti and Roberto Puddu and Giuseppe Puglisi and Chris Raum and Christian L. Reichardt and Mathieu Remazeilles and Yoel Rephaeli and Dominik Riechers and Felipe Rojas and Aditya Rotti and Anirban Roy and Sharon Sadeh and Yuki Sakurai and Maria Salatino and Mayuri Sathyanarayana Rao and Lauren Saunders and Emmanuel Schaan and Marcel Schmittfull and Neelima Sehgal and Joseph Seibert and Uros Seljak and Paul Shellard and Blake Sherwin and Meir Shimon and Carlos Sierra and Jonathan Sievers and Cristobal Sifon and Precious Sikhosana and Maximiliano Silva-Feaver and Sara M. Simon and Adrian Sinclair and Kendrick Smith and Wuhyun Sohn and Rita Sonka and David Spergel and Jacob Spisak and Suzanne T. Staggs and George Stein and Jason R. Stevens and Radek Stompor and Aritoki Suzuki and Osamu Tajima and Satoru Takakura and Grant Teply and Daniel B. Thomas and Ben Thorne and Robert Thornton and Hy Trac and Jesse Treu and Calvin Tsai and Carole Tucker and Joel Ullom and Sunny Vagnozzi and Alexander van Engelen and Jeff Van Lanen and Daniel D. Van Winkle and Eve M. Vavagiakis and Clara Vergès and Michael Vissers and Kasey Wagoner and Samantha Walker and Yuhan Wang and Jon Ward and Ben Westbrook and Nathan Whitehorn and Jason Williams and Joel Williams and Edward Wollack and Zhilei Xu and Siavash Yasini and Edward Young and Byeonghee Yu and Cyndia Yu and Fernando Zago and Mario Zannoni and Hezi Zhang and Kaiwen Zheng and Ningfeng Zhu and Andrea Zonca},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.08284},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
Astro2020 Decadal Project Whitepaper. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1808.07445