197 research outputs found
Controlling of Iridium films using interfacial proximity effects
High precision calorimetry using superconducting transition edge sensors
requires the use of superconducting films with a suitable , depending on
the application. To advance high-precision macrocalorimetry, we require
low- films that are easy to fabricate. A simple and effective way to
suppress of superconducting Iridium through the proximity effect is
demonstrated by using Ir/Pt bilayers as well as Au/Ir/Au trilayers. While Ir/Au
films fabricated by applying heat to the substrate during Ir deposition have
been used in the past for superconducting sensors, we present results of
suppression on Iridium by deposition at room temperature in Au/Ir/Au trilayers
and Ir/Pt bilayers in the range of 20-100~mK. Measurements of the
relative impedance between the Ir/Pt bilayers and Au/Ir/Au trilayers fabricated
show factor of 10 higher values in the Ir/Pt case. These new films could
play a key role in the development of scalable superconducting transition edge
sensors that require low- films to minimize heat capacity and maximize
energy resolution, while keeping high-yield fabrication methods.Comment: 5 journal pages, 4 figure
Measurements of the Temperature and E-Mode Polarization of the CMB from 500 Square Degrees of SPTpol Data
We present measurements of the -mode polarization angular auto-power
spectrum () and temperature--mode cross-power spectrum () of the
cosmic microwave background (CMB) using 150 GHz data from three seasons of
SPTpol observations. We report the power spectra over the spherical harmonic
multipole range , and detect nine acoustic peaks in the
spectrum with high signal-to-noise ratio. These measurements are the most
sensitive to date of the and power spectra at and , respectively. The observations cover 500 deg, a fivefold increase
in area compared to previous SPTpol analyses, which increases our sensitivity
to the photon diffusion damping tail of the CMB power spectra enabling tighter
constraints on \LCDM model extensions. After masking all sources with
unpolarized flux mJy we place a 95% confidence upper limit on residual
polarized point-source power of at , suggesting that the damping tail
dominates foregrounds to at least with modest source masking. We
find that the SPTpol dataset is in mild tension with the model
(), and different data splits prefer parameter values that differ
at the level. When fitting SPTpol data at we
find cosmological parameter constraints consistent with those for
temperature. Including SPTpol data at results in a preference for
a higher value of the expansion rate (H_0 = 71.3 \pm
2.1\,\mbox{km}\,s^{-1}\mbox{Mpc}^{-1} ) and a lower value for present-day
density fluctuations ().Comment: Updated to match version accepted to ApJ. 34 pages, 17 figures, 6
table
CMB Polarization B-mode Delensing with SPTpol and Herschel
We present a demonstration of delensing the observed cosmic microwave
background (CMB) B-mode polarization anisotropy. This process of reducing the
gravitational-lensing generated B-mode component will become increasingly
important for improving searches for the B modes produced by primordial
gravitational waves. In this work, we delens B-mode maps constructed from
multi-frequency SPTpol observations of a 90 deg patch of sky by subtracting
a B-mode template constructed from two inputs: SPTpol E-mode maps and a lensing
potential map estimated from the map of the
CIB. We find that our delensing procedure reduces the measured B-mode power
spectrum by 28% in the multipole range ; this is shown to be
consistent with expectations from theory and simulations and to be robust
against systematics. The null hypothesis of no delensing is rejected at . Furthermore, we build and use a suite of realistic simulations to
study the general properties of the delensing process and find that the
delensing efficiency achieved in this work is limited primarily by the noise in
the lensing potential map. We demonstrate the importance of including realistic
experimental non-idealities in the delensing forecasts used to inform
instrument and survey-strategy planning of upcoming lower-noise experiments,
such as CMB-S4.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures. Comments are welcome
A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Gravitational Lensing Potential from 100 Square Degrees of SPTpol Data
We present a measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB)
gravitational lensing potential using data from the first two seasons of
observations with SPTpol, the polarization-sensitive receiver currently
installed on the South Pole Telescope (SPT). The observations used in this work
cover 100 deg of sky with arcminute resolution at 150 GHz. Using a
quadratic estimator, we make maps of the CMB lensing potential from
combinations of CMB temperature and polarization maps. We combine these lensing
potential maps to form a minimum-variance (MV) map. The lensing potential is
measured with a signal-to-noise ratio of greater than one for angular
multipoles between . This is the highest signal-to-noise mass map
made from the CMB to date and will be powerful in cross-correlation with other
tracers of large-scale structure. We calculate the power spectrum of the
lensing potential for each estimator, and we report the value of the MV power
spectrum between as our primary result. We constrain the ratio
of the spectrum to a fiducial CDM model to be . Restricting ourselves to
polarized data only, we find . This measurement rejects the hypothesis of no lensing at
using polarization data alone, and at using both
temperature and polarization data.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure
Performance and on-sky optical characterization of the SPTpol instrument
In January 2012, the 10m South Pole Telescope (SPT) was equipped with a
polarization-sensitive camera, SPTpol, in order to measure the polarization
anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Measurements of the
polarization of the CMB at small angular scales (~several arcminutes) can
detect the gravitational lensing of the CMB by large scale structure and
constrain the sum of the neutrino masses. At large angular scales (~few
degrees) CMB measurements can constrain the energy scale of Inflation. SPTpol
is a two-color mm-wave camera that consists of 180 polarimeters at 90 GHz and
588 polarimeters at 150 GHz, with each polarimeter consisting of a dual
transition edge sensor (TES) bolometers. The full complement of 150 GHz
detectors consists of 7 arrays of 84 ortho-mode transducers (OMTs) that are
stripline coupled to two TES detectors per OMT, developed by the TRUCE
collaboration and fabricated at NIST. Each 90 GHz pixel consists of two
antenna-coupled absorbers coupled to two TES detectors, developed with Argonne
National Labs. The 1536 total detectors are read out with digital
frequency-domain multiplexing (DfMUX). The SPTpol deployment represents the
first on-sky tests of both of these detector technologies, and is one of the
first deployed instruments using DfMUX readout technology. We present the
details of the design, commissioning, deployment, on-sky optical
characterization and detector performance of the complete SPTpol focal plane.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures. Conference: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and
Instrumentation 201
SPT-3G: A Next-Generation Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Experiment on the South Pole Telescope
We describe the design of a new polarization sensitive receiver, SPT-3G, for
the 10-meter South Pole Telescope (SPT). The SPT-3G receiver will deliver a
factor of ~20 improvement in mapping speed over the current receiver, SPTpol.
The sensitivity of the SPT-3G receiver will enable the advance from statistical
detection of B-mode polarization anisotropy power to high signal-to-noise
measurements of the individual modes, i.e., maps. This will lead to precise
(~0.06 eV) constraints on the sum of neutrino masses with the potential to
directly address the neutrino mass hierarchy. It will allow a separation of the
lensing and inflationary B-mode power spectra, improving constraints on the
amplitude and shape of the primordial signal, either through SPT-3G data alone
or in combination with BICEP-2/KECK, which is observing the same area of sky.
The measurement of small-scale temperature anisotropy will provide new
constraints on the epoch of reionization. Additional science from the SPT-3G
survey will be significantly enhanced by the synergy with the ongoing optical
Dark Energy Survey (DES), including: a 1% constraint on the bias of optical
tracers of large-scale structure, a measurement of the differential Doppler
signal from pairs of galaxy clusters that will test General Relativity on ~200
Mpc scales, and improved cosmological constraints from the abundance of
clusters of galaxies.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures. To be published in Proceedings of SPIE Volume
9153. Presented at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2014,
conference 915
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