Kavli Affiliate: Jeffrey J. McMahon
| First 5 Authors: Carlos E. Sierra, Kathleen Harrington, Shreya Sutariya, Thomas Alford, Anna M. Kofman
| Summary:
The Simons Observatory will map the temperature and polarization over half of
the sky, at millimeter wavelengths in six spectral bands from the Atacama
Desert in Chile. These data will provide new insights into the genesis,
content, and history of our Universe; the astrophysics of galaxies and galaxy
clusters; objects in our solar system; and time-varying astrophysical
phenomena. This ambitious new instrument suite, initially comprising three 0.5
m small-aperture telescopes and one 6 m large aperture telescope, is designed
using a common combination of new technologies and new implementations to
realize an observatory significantly more capable than the previous generation.
In this paper, we present the pre-deployment performance of the first
mid-frequency "optics tube" which will be fielded on the large aperture
telescope with sensitivity to the 90 and 150 GHz spectral bands. This optics
tube contains lenses, filters, detectors, and readout components, all of which
operate at cryogenic temperatures. It is one of seven that form the core of the
large aperture telescope receiver in its initial deployment. We describe this
optics tube, including details of comprehensive testing methods, new techniques
for beam and passband characterization, and its measured performance. The
performance metrics include beams, optical efficiency, passbands, and forecasts
for the on-sky performance of the system. We forecast a sensitivity that
exceeds the requirements of the large aperture telescope with greater than 30%
margin in each spectral band, and predict that the instrument will realize
diffraction-limited performance and the expected detector passbands.
| Search Query: ArXiv Query: search_query=au:”Jeffrey J. McMahon”&id_list=&start=0&max_results=3