The balloon-borne large-aperture submillimeter telescope for polarimetry: BLAST-Pol

The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry (BLAST-Pol) is a suborbital mapping experiment designed to study the role played by magnetic fields in the star formation process. BLAST-Pol is the reconstructed BLAST telescope, with the addition of linear polarization capability. Using a 1.8 m Cassegrain telescope, BLAST-Pol images the sky onto a focal plane that consists of 280 bolometric detectors in three arrays, observing simultaneously at 250, 350, and 500 um. The diffraction-limited optical system provides a resolution of 30'' at 250 um. The polarimeter consists of photolithographic polarizing grids mounted in front of each bolometer/detector array. A rotating 4 K achromatic half-wave plate provides additional polarization modulation. With its unprecedented mapping speed and resolution, BLAST-Pol will produce three-color polarization maps for a large number of molecular clouds. The instrument provides a much needed bridge in spatial coverage between larger-scale, coarse resolution surveys and narrow field of view, and high resolution observations of substructure within molecular cloud cores. The first science flight will be from McMurdo Station, Antarctica in December 2010.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures Submitted to SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation Conference 201

Comparison of prestellar core elongations and large-scale molecular cloud structures in the Lupus 1 region

Turbulence and magnetic fields are expected to be important for regulating molecular cloud formation and evolution. However, their effects on sub-parsec to 100 parsec scales, leading to the formation of starless cores, are not well understood. We investigate the prestellar core structure morphologies obtained from analysis of the Herschel-SPIRE 350 mum maps of the Lupus I cloud. This distribution is first compared on a statistical basis to the large-scale shape of the main filament. We find the distribution of the elongation position angle of the cores to be consistent with a random distribution, which means no specific orientation of the morphology of the cores is observed with respect to the mean orientation of the large-scale filament in Lupus I, nor relative to a large-scale bent filament model. This distribution is also compared to the mean orientation of the large-scale magnetic fields probed at 350 mum with the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Telescope for Polarimetry during its 2010 campaign. Here again we do not find any correlation between the core morphology distribution and the average orientation of the magnetic fields on parsec scales. Our main conclusion is that the local filament dynamics---including secondary filaments that often run orthogonally to the primary filament---and possibly small-scale variations in the local magnetic field direction, could be the dominant factors for explaining the final orientation of each core

Instrumental performance and results from testing of the BLAST-TNG receiver, submillimeter optics, and MKID arrays

Polarized thermal emission from interstellar dust grains can be used to map magnetic fields in star forming molecular clouds and the diffuse interstellar medium (ISM). The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry (BLASTPol) flew from Antarctica in 2010 and 2012 and produced degree-scale polarization maps of several nearby molecular clouds with arcminute resolution. The success of BLASTPol has motivated a next-generation instrument, BLAST-TNG, which will use more than 3000 linear polarization sensitive microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs) combined with a 2.5m diameter carbon fiber primary mirror to make diffraction-limited observations at 250, 350, and 500 $\mu$m. With 16 times the mapping speed of BLASTPol, sub-arcminute resolution, and a longer flight time, BLAST-TNG will be able to examine nearby molecular clouds and the diffuse galactic dust polarization spectrum in unprecedented detail. The 250 $\mu$m detector array has been integrated into the new cryogenic receiver, and is undergoing testing to establish the optical and polarization characteristics of the instrument. BLAST-TNG will demonstrate the effectiveness of kilo-pixel MKID arrays for applications in submillimeter astronomy. BLAST-TNG is scheduled to fly from Antarctica in December 2017 for 28 days and will be the first balloon-borne telescope to offer a quarter of the flight for "shared risk" observing by the community.Comment: Presented at SPIE Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy VIII, June 29th, 201

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: The polarization-sensitive ACTPol instrument

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) is designed to make high angular resolution measurements of anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) at millimeter wavelengths. We describe ACTPol, an upgraded receiver for ACT, which uses feedhorn-coupled, polarization-sensitive detector arrays, a 3 degree field of view, 100 mK cryogenics with continuous cooling, and meta material anti-reflection coatings. ACTPol comprises three arrays with separate cryogenic optics: two arrays at a central frequency of 148 GHz and one array operating simultaneously at both 97 GHz and 148 GHz. The combined instrument sensitivity, angular resolution, and sky coverage are optimized for measuring angular power spectra, clusters via the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich and kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich signals, and CMB lensing due to large scale structure. The receiver was commissioned with its first 148 GHz array in 2013, observed with both 148 GHz arrays in 2014, and has recently completed its first full season of operations with the full suite of three arrays. This paper provides an overview of the design and initial performance of the receiver and related systems

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Two-Season ACTPol Spectra and Parameters

We present the temperature and polarization angular power spectra measured by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter (ACTPol). We analyze night-time data collected during 2013-14 using two detector arrays at 149 GHz, from 548 deg$^2$ of sky on the celestial equator. We use these spectra, and the spectra measured with the MBAC camera on ACT from 2008-10, in combination with Planck and WMAP data to estimate cosmological parameters from the temperature, polarization, and temperature-polarization cross-correlations. We find the new ACTPol data to be consistent with the LCDM model. The ACTPol temperature-polarization cross-spectrum now provides stronger constraints on multiple parameters than the ACTPol temperature spectrum, including the baryon density, the acoustic peak angular scale, and the derived Hubble constant. Adding the new data to planck temperature data tightens the limits on damping tail parameters, for example reducing the joint uncertainty on the number of neutrino species and the primordial helium fraction by 20%.Comment: 23 pages, 25 figure

Relative Alignment between the Magnetic Field and Molecular Gas Structure in the Vela C Giant Molecular Cloud Using Low- and High-density Tracers

We compare the magnetic field orientation for the young giant molecular cloud Vela C inferred from 500 μm polarization maps made with the BLASTPol balloon-borne polarimeter to the orientation of structures in the integrated line emission maps from Mopra observations. Averaging over the entire cloud we find that elongated structures in integrated line-intensity or zeroth-moment maps, for low-density tracers such as 12CO and 13CO J → 1 – 0, are statistically more likely to align parallel to the magnetic field, while intermediate- or high-density tracers show (on average) a tendency for alignment perpendicular to the magnetic field. This observation agrees with previous studies of the change in relative orientation with column density in Vela C, and supports a model where the magnetic field is strong enough to have influenced the formation of dense gas structures within Vela C. The transition from parallel to no preferred/perpendicular orientation appears to occur between the densities traced by 13CO and by C18O J → 1 – 0. Using RADEX radiative transfer models to estimate the characteristic number density traced by each molecular line, we find that the transition occurs at a molecular hydrogen number density of approximately 103 cm−3 . We also see that the Centre Ridge (the highest column density and most active star-forming region within Vela C) appears to have a transition at a lower number density, suggesting that this may depend on the evolutionary state of the cloud

Design and Fabrication of Zwitter-Wettable Nanostructured Films

Manipulating surface properties using chemistry and roughness has led to the development of advanced multifunctional surfaces. Here, in a nanostructured polymer film consisting of a hydrophilic reservoir of chitosan/carboxymethyl cellulose capped with various hydrophobic layers, we demonstrate the role of a third design factor, water permeation rate. We use this additional design criterion to produce antifogging coatings that readily absorb water vapor while simultaneously exhibiting hydrophobic character to liquid water. These zwitter-wettable films, produced via aqueous layer-by-layer assembly, consist of a nanoscale thin hydrophobic capping layer (chitosan/Nafion) that enables water vapor to diffuse rapidly into the underlying hydrophilic reservoir rather than nucleating drops of liquid water on the surface. We characterize these novel films using a quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM-D) and via depth-profiling X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) in addition to extensive testing for fogging/antifogging performance.1121Nsciescopu

The half wave plate rotator for the BLAST-TNG balloon-borne telescope

The Next Generation Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST-TNG) is an experiment designed to map magnetic fields in molecular clouds in order to study their role in the star formation process. The telescope will be launched aboard a high-altitude balloon in December 2016 for a 4-week flight from McMurdo station in Antarctica. BLAST-TNG will measure the polarization of submillimeter thermal emission from magnetically aligned interstellar dust grains, using large format arrays of kinetic inductance detectors operating in three bands centered at 250, 350, and 500 microns, with sub-arcminute angular resolution. The optical system includes an achromatic Half Wave Plate (HWP), mounted in a Half Wave Plate rotator (HWPr). The HWP and HWPr will operate at 4 K temperature to reduce thermal noise in our measurements, so it was crucial to account for the effects of thermal contraction at low temperature in the HWPr design. It was also equally important for the design to meet torque requirements while minimizing the power from friction and conduction dissipated at the 4 K stage. We also discuss our plan for cold testing the HWPr using a repurposed cryostat with a Silicon Diode thermometer read out by an EDAS-CE Ethernet data acquisition system

NMR-based metabolomic study of Apulian Coratina extra virgin olive oil extracted with a combined ultrasound and thermal conditioning process in an industrial setting

The innovative combination of ultrasound (Us) with a thermal exchanger to produce high quality extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) was studied using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and multivariate analysis (MVA). Major and minor metabolomic components of Apulian Coratina EVOO obtained using the two methods were compared. Early and late olive ripening stages were also considered. An increased amount of polyphenols was found for EVOOs obtained using the Us with respect to the conventional method for both early and late ripening stages (900.8 ± 10.3 and 571.9 ± 9.9 mg/kg versus 645.1 ± 9.3 and 440.8 ± 10.4 mg/kg). NMR spectroscopy showed a significant increase (P < 0.05) in polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) as well as in the tyrosol and hydroxytyrosol derivatives, such as oleocanthal, oleacein, and elenolic acid, for both ripening stages. In conclusion, NMR spectroscopy provides information about the metabolomic components of EVOOs to producers, while the Us process increases the levels of healthy bioactive components