The QMAP and MAT/TOCO Experiments for Measuring Anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background

Details The QMAP and MAT/TOCO Experiments for Measuring Anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background The QMAP and MAT/TOCO Experiments for Measuring Anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background

2001-08-02

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0108030v1

Astrophys.J.Suppl. 140 (2002) 115-142

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

31 pages, 11 figures, Submitted to ApJ

Scientific paper

10.1086/339686

We describe two related experiments that measured the anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). QMAP was a balloon-borne telescope that flew twice in 1996, collecting data on degree angular scales with an array of six high electron mobility transistor-based amplifiers (HEMTs). QMAP was the first experiment to use an interlocking scan strategy to directly produce high signal-to-noise CMB maps. The QMAP gondola was then refit for ground based work as the MAT/TOCO experiment. Observations were made from 5200 m on Cerro Toco in Northern Chile in 1997 and 1998 using time-domain beam synthesis. MAT/TOCO was the first experiment to see both the rise and fall of the CMB angular spectrum, thereby localizing the position of the first peak to l_{peak}=216 +/- 14. In addition to describing the instruments, we discuss the data selection methods, checks for systematic errors, and we compare the MAT/TOCO results to those from recent experiments. We also correct the data to account for an updated calibration and a small contribution from foreground emission. We find the amplitude of the first peak for l between 160 and 240 to be T_{peak}=80.9 +/- 3.4 +/- 5.1 uK, where the first error is statistical and the second is from calibration.

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