The Simons Observatory: Development and Optical Evaluation of Achromatic Half-Wave Plates

Junna Sugiyama; Tomoki Terasaki; Kana Sakaguri; Bryce Bixler; Yuki Sakurai; Kam Arnold; Kevin T. Crowley; Rahul Datta; Nicholas Galitzki; Masaya Hasegawa; Bradley R. Johnson; Brian Keating; Akito Kusaka; Adrian Lee; Tomotake Matsumura; Jeffrey Mcmahon; Maximiliano Silva-Feaver; Yuhan Wang; Kyohei Yamada

doi:10.1007/s10909-023-03036-3

The Simons Observatory: Development and Optical Evaluation of Achromatic Half-Wave Plates

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics 2024-02-16 v1

Authors: Junna Sugiyama , Tomoki Terasaki , Kana Sakaguri , Bryce Bixler , Yuki Sakurai , Kam Arnold , Kevin T. Crowley , Rahul Datta , Nicholas Galitzki , Masaya Hasegawa , Bradley R. Johnson , Brian Keating , Akito Kusaka , Adrian Lee , Tomotake Matsumura , Jeffrey Mcmahon , Maximiliano Silva-Feaver , Yuhan Wang , Kyohei Yamada

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Abstract

The Simons Observatory (SO) experiment is a cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment located in the Atacama Desert, Chile. The SO' s small aperture telescopes (SATs) consist of three telescopes designed for precise CMB polarimetry at large angular scales. Each SAT uses a cryogenic rotating half-wave plate (HWP) as a polarization modulator to mitigate atmospheric 1/f noise and other systematics. To realize efficient polarization modulation over the observation bands, we fabricated an achromatic HWP (AHWP) consisting of three sapphire plates with anti-reflection coatings. The AHWP is designed to have broadband modulation efficiency and transmittance. This paper reports on the design and the preliminary characterization of the AHWPs for SATs.

Keywords

Simons Observatory achromatic half-wave plate CMB polarimetry polarization modulator sapphire anti-reflection coating

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@article{arxiv.2402.09620,
  title  = {The Simons Observatory: Development and Optical Evaluation of Achromatic Half-Wave Plates},
  author = {Junna Sugiyama and Tomoki Terasaki and Kana Sakaguri and Bryce Bixler and Yuki Sakurai and Kam Arnold and Kevin T. Crowley and Rahul Datta and Nicholas Galitzki and Masaya Hasegawa and Bradley R. Johnson and Brian Keating and Akito Kusaka and Adrian Lee and Tomotake Matsumura and Jeffrey Mcmahon and Maximiliano Silva-Feaver and Yuhan Wang and Kyohei Yamada},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.09620},
  year   = {2024}
}

The Simons Observatory: Development and Optical Evaluation of Achromatic Half-Wave Plates

Abstract

Keywords

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