45 research outputs found

    CCAT-prime: Science with an Ultra-widefield Submillimeter Observatory at Cerro Chajnantor

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    We present the detailed science case, and brief descriptions of the telescope design, site, and first light instrument plans for a new ultra-wide field submillimeter observatory, CCAT-prime, that we are constructing at a 5600 m elevation site on Cerro Chajnantor in northern Chile. Our science goals are to study star and galaxy formation from the epoch of reionization to the present, investigate the growth of structure in the Universe, improve the precision of B-mode CMB measurements, and investigate the interstellar medium and star formation in the Galaxy and nearby galaxies through spectroscopic, polarimetric, and broadband surveys at wavelengths from 200 um to 2 mm. These goals are realized with our two first light instruments, a large field-of-view (FoV) bolometer-based imager called Prime-Cam (that has both camera and an imaging spectrometer modules), and a multi-beam submillimeter heterodyne spectrometer, CHAI. CCAT-prime will have very high surface accuracy and very low system emissivity, so that combined with its wide FoV at the unsurpassed CCAT site our telescope/instrumentation combination is ideally suited to pursue this science. The CCAT-prime telescope is being designed and built by Vertex Antennentechnik GmbH. We expect to achieve first light in the spring of 2021.Comment: Presented at SPIE Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy IX, June 14th, 201

    The Simons Observatory microwave SQUID multiplexing detector module design

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    Advances in cosmic microwave background (CMB) science depend on increasing the number of sensitive detectors observing the sky. New instruments deploy large arrays of superconducting transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers tiled densely into ever larger focal planes. High multiplexing factors reduce the thermal loading on the cryogenic receivers and simplify their design. We present the design of focal-plane modules with an order of magnitude higher multiplexing factor than has previously been achieved with TES bolometers. We focus on the novel cold readout component, which employs microwave SQUID multiplexing (μ\mumux). Simons Observatory will use 49 modules containing 60,000 bolometers to make exquisitely sensitive measurements of the CMB. We validate the focal-plane module design, presenting measurements of the readout component with and without a prototype detector array of 1728 polarization-sensitive bolometers coupled to feedhorns. The readout component achieves a 95%95\% yield and a 910 multiplexing factor. The median white noise of each readout channel is 65 pA/Hz\mathrm{pA/\sqrt{Hz}}. This impacts the projected SO mapping speed by <8%< 8\%, which is less than is assumed in the sensitivity projections. The results validate the full functionality of the module. We discuss the measured performance in the context of SO science requirements, which are exceeded.Comment: Accepted to The Astrophysical Journa

    The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: DR6 Gravitational Lensing Map and Cosmological Parameters

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    We present cosmological constraints from a gravitational lensing mass map covering 9400 sq. deg. reconstructed from CMB measurements made by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) from 2017 to 2021. In combination with BAO measurements (from SDSS and 6dF), we obtain the amplitude of matter fluctuations σ8=0.819±0.015\sigma_8 = 0.819 \pm 0.015 at 1.8% precision, S8σ8(Ωm/0.3)0.5=0.840±0.028S_8\equiv\sigma_8({\Omega_{\rm m}}/0.3)^{0.5}=0.840\pm0.028 and the Hubble constant H0=(68.3±1.1)kms1Mpc1H_0= (68.3 \pm 1.1)\, \text{km}\,\text{s}^{-1}\,\text{Mpc}^{-1} at 1.6% precision. A joint constraint with CMB lensing measured by the Planck satellite yields even more precise values: σ8=0.812±0.013\sigma_8 = 0.812 \pm 0.013, S8σ8(Ωm/0.3)0.5=0.831±0.023S_8\equiv\sigma_8({\Omega_{\rm m}}/0.3)^{0.5}=0.831\pm0.023 and H0=(68.1±1.0)kms1Mpc1H_0= (68.1 \pm 1.0)\, \text{km}\,\text{s}^{-1}\,\text{Mpc}^{-1}. These measurements agree well with Λ\LambdaCDM-model extrapolations from the CMB anisotropies measured by Planck. To compare these constraints to those from the KiDS, DES, and HSC galaxy surveys, we revisit those data sets with a uniform set of assumptions, and find S8S_8 from all three surveys are lower than that from ACT+Planck lensing by varying levels ranging from 1.7-2.1σ\sigma. These results motivate further measurements and comparison, not just between the CMB anisotropies and galaxy lensing, but also between CMB lensing probing z0.55z\sim 0.5-5 on mostly-linear scales and galaxy lensing at z0.5z\sim 0.5 on smaller scales. We combine our CMB lensing measurements with CMB anisotropies to constrain extensions of Λ\LambdaCDM, limiting the sum of the neutrino masses to mν<0.12\sum m_{\nu} < 0.12 eV (95% c.l.), for example. Our results provide independent confirmation that the universe is spatially flat, conforms with general relativity, and is described remarkably well by the Λ\LambdaCDM model, while paving a promising path for neutrino physics with gravitational lensing from upcoming ground-based CMB surveys.Comment: 30 pages, 16 figures, prepared for submission to ApJ. Cosmological likelihood data is here: https://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/act/actadv_prod_table.html ; likelihood software is here: https://github.com/ACTCollaboration/act_dr6_lenslike . Also see companion papers Qu et al and MacCrann et al. Mass maps will be released when papers are publishe

    The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: High-resolution component-separated maps across one-third of the sky

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    Observations of the millimeter sky contain valuable information on a number of signals, including the blackbody cosmic microwave background (CMB), Galactic emissions, and the Compton-yy distortion due to the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect. Extracting new insight into cosmological and astrophysical questions often requires combining multi-wavelength observations to spectrally isolate one component. In this work, we present a new arcminute-resolution Compton-yy map, which traces out the line-of-sight-integrated electron pressure, as well as maps of the CMB in intensity and E-mode polarization, across a third of the sky (around 13,000 sq.~deg.). We produce these through a joint analysis of data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) Data Release 4 and 6 at frequencies of roughly 93, 148, and 225 GHz, together with data from the \textit{Planck} satellite at frequencies between 30 GHz and 545 GHz. We present detailed verification of an internal linear combination pipeline implemented in a needlet frame that allows us to efficiently suppress Galactic contamination and account for spatial variations in the ACT instrument noise. These maps provide a significant advance, in noise levels and resolution, over the existing \textit{Planck} component-separated maps and will enable a host of science goals including studies of cluster and galaxy astrophysics, inferences of the cosmic velocity field, primordial non-Gaussianity searches, and gravitational lensing reconstruction of the CMB.Comment: The Compton-y map and associated products will be made publicly available upon publication of the paper. The CMB T and E mode maps will be made available when the DR6 maps are made publi

    The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A Measurement of the DR6 CMB Lensing Power Spectrum and its Implications for Structure Growth

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    We present new measurements of cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing over 94009400 sq. deg. of the sky. These lensing measurements are derived from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) Data Release 6 (DR6) CMB dataset, which consists of five seasons of ACT CMB temperature and polarization observations. We determine the amplitude of the CMB lensing power spectrum at 2.3%2.3\% precision (43σ43\sigma significance) using a novel pipeline that minimizes sensitivity to foregrounds and to noise properties. To ensure our results are robust, we analyze an extensive set of null tests, consistency tests, and systematic error estimates and employ a blinded analysis framework. The baseline spectrum is well fit by a lensing amplitude of Alens=1.013±0.023A_{\mathrm{lens}}=1.013\pm0.023 relative to the Planck 2018 CMB power spectra best-fit Λ\LambdaCDM model and Alens=1.005±0.023A_{\mathrm{lens}}=1.005\pm0.023 relative to the ACT DR4+WMAP\text{ACT DR4} + \text{WMAP} best-fit model. From our lensing power spectrum measurement, we derive constraints on the parameter combination S8CMBLσ8(Ωm/0.3)0.25S^{\mathrm{CMBL}}_8 \equiv \sigma_8 \left({\Omega_m}/{0.3}\right)^{0.25} of S8CMBL=0.818±0.022S^{\mathrm{CMBL}}_8= 0.818\pm0.022 from ACT DR6 CMB lensing alone and S8CMBL=0.813±0.018S^{\mathrm{CMBL}}_8= 0.813\pm0.018 when combining ACT DR6 and Planck NPIPE CMB lensing power spectra. These results are in excellent agreement with Λ\LambdaCDM model constraints from Planck or ACT DR4+WMAP\text{ACT DR4} + \text{WMAP} CMB power spectrum measurements. Our lensing measurements from redshifts z0.5z\sim0.5--55 are thus fully consistent with Λ\LambdaCDM structure growth predictions based on CMB anisotropies probing primarily z1100z\sim1100. We find no evidence for a suppression of the amplitude of cosmic structure at low redshiftsComment: 45+21 pages, 50 figures. Prepared for submission to ApJ. Also see companion papers Madhavacheril et al and MacCrann et a

    The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Detection of the pairwise kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect with SDSS DR15 galaxies

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    We present a 5.4 σ detection of the pairwise kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (kSZ) effect using Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and Planck CMB observations in combination with Luminous Red Galaxy samples from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR15 catalog. Results are obtained using three ACT CMB maps: co-added 150 and 98 GHz maps, combining observations from 2008–2018 (ACT DR5), which overlap with SDSS DR15 over 3,700 sq. deg., and a component-separated map using night-time only observations from 2014–2015 (ACT DR4), overlapping with SDSS DR15 over 2,089 sq. deg. Comparisons of the results from these three maps provide consistency checks in relation to potential frequency-dependent foreground contamination. A total of 343,647 galaxies are used as tracers to identify and locate galaxy groups and clusters from which the kSZ signal is extracted using aperture photometry. We consider the impact of various aperture photometry assumptions and covariance estimation methods on the signal extraction. Theoretical predictions of the pairwise velocities are used to obtain best-fit, mass-averaged, optical depth estimates for each of five luminosity-selected tracer samples. A comparison of the kSZ-derived optical depth measurements obtained here to those derived from the thermal SZ effect for the same sample is presented in a companion paper
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