The South Pole Telescope

Details The South Pole Telescope The South Pole Telescope

2004-11-04

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0411122v1

Proc.SPIE Int.Soc.Opt.Eng.5498:11,2004

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Written prior to SPIE conference, June 21-25, 2004. 19 pages, 13 figures. Also available (with higher resolution figures) at

Scientific paper

10.1117/12.552473

A new 10 meter diameter telescope is being constructed for deployment at the NSF South Pole research station. The telescope is designed for conducting large-area millimeter and sub-millimeter wave surveys of faint, low contrast emission, as required to map primary and secondary anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. To achieve the required sensitivity and resolution, the telescope design employs an off-axis primary with a 10m diameter clear aperture. The full aperture and the associated optics will have a combined surface accuracy of better than 20 microns rms to allow precision operation in the submillimeter atmospheric windows. The telescope will be surrounded with a large reflecting ground screen to reduce sensitivity to thermal emission from the ground and local interference. The optics of the telescope will support a square degree field of view at 2mm wavelength and will feed a new 1000-element micro-lithographed planar bolometric array with superconducting transition-edge sensors and frequency-multiplexed readouts. The first key project will be to conduct a survey over approximately 4000 degrees for galaxy clusters using the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect. This survey should find many thousands of clusters with a mass selection criteria that is remarkably uniform with redshift. Armed with redshifts obtained from optical and infrared follow-up observations, it is expected that the survey will enable significant constraints to be placed on the equation of state of the dark energy.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

The South Pole Telescope does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with The South Pole Telescope, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and The South Pole Telescope will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-277884