The Simons Observatory: Instrument Overview
Abstract
The Simons Observatory (SO) will make precise temperature and polarization measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using a set of telescopes which will cover angular scales between 1 arcminute and tens of degrees, contain over 60,000 detectors, and observe at frequencies between 27 and 270 GHz. SO will consist of a 6 m aperture telescope coupled to over 30,000 transition-edge sensor bolometers along with three 42 cm aperture refractive telescopes, coupled to an additional 30,000+ detectors, all of which will be located in the Atacama Desert at an altitude of 5190 m. The powerful combination of large and small apertures in a CMB observatory will allow us to sample a wide range of angular scales over a common survey area. SO will measure fundamental cosmological parameters of our universe, constrain primordial fluctuations, find high redshift clusters via the Sunyaev-Zel`dovich effect, constrain properties of neutrinos, and trace the density and velocity of the matter in the universe over cosmic time. The complex set of technical and science requirements for this experiment has led to innovative instrumentation solutions which we will discuss. The large aperture telescope will couple to a cryogenic receiver that is 2.4 m in diameter and nearly 3 m long, creating a number of technical challenges. Concurrently, we are designing the array of cryogenic receivers housing the 42 cm aperture telescopes. We will discuss the sensor technology SO will use and we will give an overview of the drivers for and designs of the SO telescopes and receivers, with their cold optical components and detector arrays.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1808.04493,
title = {The Simons Observatory: Instrument Overview},
author = {Nicholas Galitzki and Aamir Ali and Kam S. Arnold and Peter C. Ashton and Jason E. Austermann and Carlo Baccigalupi and Taylor Baildon and Darcy Barron and James A. Beall and Shawn Beckman and Sarah Marie M. Bruno and Sean Bryan and Paolo G. Calisse and Grace E. Chesmore and Yuji Chinone and Steve K. Choi and Gabriele Coppi and Kevin D. Crowley and Kevin T. Crowley and Ari Cukierman and Mark J. Devlin and Simon Dicker and Bradley Dober and Shannon M. Duff and Jo Dunkley and Giulio Fabbian and Patricio A. Gallardo and Martina Gerbino and Neil Goeckner-Wald and Joseph E. Golec and Jon E. Gudmundsson and Erin E. Healy and Shawn Henderson and Charles A. Hill and Gene C. Hilton and Shuay-Pwu Patty Ho and Logan A. Howe and Johannes Hubmayr and Oliver Jeong and Brian Keating and Brian J. Koopman and Kenji Kuichi and Akito Kusaka and Jacob Lashner and Adrian T. Lee and Yaqiong Li and Michele Limon and Marius Lungu and Frederick Matsuda and Philip D. Mauskopf and Andrew J. May and Nialh McCallum and Jeff McMahon and Federico Nati and Michael D. Niemack and John L. Orlowski-Scherer and Stephen C. Parshley and Lucio Piccirillo and Mayuri Sathyanarayana Rao and Christopher Raum and Maria Salatino and Joseph S. Seibert and Carlos Sierra and Max Silva-Feaver and Sara M. Simon and Suzanne T. Staggs and Jason R. Stevens and Aritoki Suzuki and Grant Teply and Robert Thornton and Calvin Tsai and Joel N. Ullom and Eve M. Vavagiakis and Michael R. Vissers and Benjamin Westbrook and Edward J. Wollack and Zhilei Xu and Ningfeng Zhu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.04493},
year = {2019}
}