The AzTEC mm-wavelength camera Wilson, G. W.; Austermann, J. E.; Perera, T. A. ...
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
20/May , Volume:
386, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
AzTEC is a mm-wavelength bolometric camera utilizing 144 silicon nitride micromesh detectors. Here, we describe the AzTEC instrument architecture and its use as an astronomical instrument. We report ...on several performance metrics measured during a three-month observing campaign at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and conclude with our plans for AzTEC as a facility instrument on the Large Millimetre Telescope.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
We present results of a new deep 1.1 mm survey using Bolocam, a millimeter-wavelength bolometer array camera designed for mapping large fields at fast scan rates, without chopping. A map, galaxy ...candidate list, and derived number counts are presented. This survey encompasses 324 arcmin super(2) to an rms noise level (filtered for point sources) of s sub(1.1 mm) 1.4 mJy beam super(-1) and includes the entire regions surveyed by the published 8 mJy 850 km JCMT SCUBA and 1.2 mm IRAM MAMBO surveys. We reduced the data using a custom software pipeline to remove correlated sky and instrument noise via a principal component analysis. Extensive simulations and jackknife tests were performed to confirm the robustness of our source candidates and estimate the effects of false detections, bias, and completeness. In total, 17 source candidates were detected at a significance .3.0 s, with six expected false detections. Nine candidates are new detections, while eight candidates have coincident SCUBA 850 km and/or MAMBO 1.2 mm detections. From our observed number counts, we estimate the underlying differential number count distribution of submillimeter galaxies and find it to be in general agreement with previous surveys. Modeling the spectral energy distributions of these submillimeter galaxies after observations of dusty nearby galaxies suggests extreme luminosities of L = (1.0-1.6) x 10 super(13) L sub( )and, if powered by star formation, star formation rates of 500-800 M sub( )yr super(-1).
We present an analysis of an 8-arcmin diameter map of the area around the galaxy cluster Abell 1835 from jiggle-map observations at a wavelength of 1.1 mm using the Bolometric Camera (Bolocam) ...mounted on the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO). The data are well described by a model including a extended Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) emission from the cluster gas plus emission from the cluster central galaxy and two bright background submm galaxies magnified by the gravitational lensing of the cluster. We measure flux densities of the two bright point sources in the field: SMM J14011+0252 and SMM J14009+0252 to be 6.5 ± 2.0 ± 0.8 and 11.3 ± 1.9 ± 1.3 mJy, respectively. Fitting the map to a sky model consisting of the point sources and the SZ emission from the cluster gas with a beta model density profile with parameters, θc= 33.6 arcsec and β= 0.69, we find the peak surface brightness of the SZ emission to be I
c= 3.73 ± 0.45 ± 0.60 × 10−21 W m−2sr−1 Hz−1, where the first error is the statistical uncertainty in the fit and the second error represents the calibration uncertainty and additional systematics. Assuming zero cluster peculiar velocity and an X-ray temperature of T
e= 9 keV, this surface brightness corresponds to a central Comptonization of y
0= (4.41 ± 0.53 ± 0.70) × 10−4. The cluster image represents one of the highest significance SZ detections of a cluster in the positive region of the thermal SZ spectrum to date. We compare the measured central intensity at 1.1 mm to other SZ measurements of Abell 1835 at different wavelengths to obtain values for y
0= (3.58 ± 0.28) × 10−4 and the cluster peculiar velocity v
z
=−538 ± 414 km s−1.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Kinetic inductance detectors (KIDs) show promise as a competitive technology for astronomical observations over a wide range of wavelengths. We are interested in comparing the fundamental limitations ...to the sensitivity of KIDs with that of transition edge sensors (TESs) at millimeter wavelengths, specifically over the wavelengths required for studies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). We calculate the total fundamental noise arising from optical and thermal excitations in TESs and KIDs for a variety of bath temperatures and optical loading scenarios for applications at millimeter wavelengths. Special consideration is given to the case of ground-based observations of 100 GHz radiation with a 100 mK bath temperature, conditions consistent with the planned second module of the QUBIC telescope, a CMB instrument Battistelli (Astropart Phys 34:705,
2011
). Under these conditions, a titanium nitride KID with optimized critical temperature pays a few percent noise penalty compared to a typical optimized TES.
Spider is a long-duration, balloon-borne polarimeter designed to measure large-scale cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization with very high sensitivity and control of systematics. The ...instrument will map over half the sky with degree angular resolution in the I, Q, and U Stokes parameters in four frequency bands from 96 to 275 GHz. Spider's ultimate goal is to detect the primordial gravity-wave signal imprinted on the CMB B-mode polarization. One of the challenges in achieving this goal is the minimization of the contamination of B-modes by systematic effects. This paper explores a number of instrument systematics and observing strategies in order to optimize B-mode sensitivity. This is done by injecting realistic-amplitude, time-varying systematics into a set of simulated time streams. Tests of the impact of detector noise characteristics, pointing jitter, payload pendulations, polarization angle offsets, beam systematics, and receiver gain drifts are shown. Spider's default observing strategy is to spin continuously in azimuth, with polarization modulation achieved by either a rapidly spinning half-wave plate or a rapidly spinning gondola and a slowly stepped half-wave plate. Although the latter is more susceptible to systematics, the results shown here indicate that either mode of operation can be used by Spider.
We are developing athermal-phonon mediated particle detectors that utilize microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs) as phonon sensors. MKIDs afford natural frequency domain multiplexing, which ...allows for massive substrates to be patterned with hundreds of sensors while keeping readout complexity to a minimum. Previously, our 2 cm
×
2 cm
×
1 mm proof-of-principle device utilized 20 MKIDs and, from the magnitude and timing of their response, we were able to reconstruct the position of a particle interaction to
<
1 mm. From this, we corrected for variations in detector response across the device and measured an energy resolution of
σ
E
=
0.55
keV at 30 keV. We have designed and fabricated a new 3-inch prototype device that utilizes 256 MKID sensors, and we present results from its initial testing. Applications include rare event searches, such as the direct detection of dark matter and neutrinoless double beta decay, as well as hard X-ray/soft
γ
-ray astrophysics.
The BICEP2 CMB polarization experiment
Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE,
01/2010
Conference Proceeding
PDF
