492 research outputs found
The Simons Observatory: Antenna control software integration and implementation
The Simons Observatory (SO) is a ground-based cosmic microwave background
survey experiment that consists of three 0.5 m small-aperture telescopes and
one 6 m large-aperture telescope, sited at an elevation of 5200 m in the
Atacama Desert in Chile. SO will study the polarization and temperature
anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The observatory will
require well-understood telescope pointing and scanning. Good antenna control
will allow us to execute the scan strategy devised to optimize sensitivity to
our scientific goals, calibrate the system with celestial targets, and make
maps. To achieve this, we integrate the data acquisition and control of the
telescopes' Antenna Control Units (ACUs) within the software framework of the
SO Observatory Control System (OCS). We present here the current status of the
software integration for the ACUs, as well as measurements of the Small
Aperture Telescope platforms' responsiveness to software commanding in the
factory, plans for in situ measurements, and prospects for implementation on
the Large Aperture Telescope.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, paper 12190-170 for "Proc. SPIE 12190
Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for
Astronomy XI
Critical Boundary Sine-Gordon Revisited
We revisit the exact solution of the two space-time dimensional quantum field
theory of a free massless boson with a periodic boundary interaction and
self-dual period. We analyze the model by using a mapping to free fermions with
a boundary mass term originally suggested in ref.[22]. We find that the entire
SL(2,C) family of boundary states of a single boson are boundary sine-Gordon
states and we derive a simple explicit expression for the boundary state in
fermion variables and as a function of sine-Gordon coupling constants. We use
this expression to compute the partition function. We observe that the solution
of the model has a strong-weak coupling generalization of T-duality. We then
examine a class of recently discovered conformal boundary states for compact
bosons with radii which are rational numbers times the self-dual radius. These
have simple expression in fermion variables. We postulate sine-Gordon-like
field theories with discrete gauge symmmetries for which they are the
appropriate boundary states.Comment: 33 pages, 1 figure, references added, typos correcte
Optical modeling and polarization calibration for CMB measurements with ACTPol and Advanced ACTPol
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter (ACTPol) is a polarization
sensitive upgrade to the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. Located at an elevation
of 5190 m, ACTPol measures the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature
and polarization with arcminute-scale angular resolution. Calibration of the
detector angles is a critical step in producing maps of the CMB polarization.
Polarization angle offsets in the detector calibration can cause leakage in
polarization from E to B modes and induce a spurious signal in the EB and TB
cross correlations, which eliminates our ability to measure potential
cosmological sources of EB and TB signals, such as cosmic birefringence. We
present our optical modeling and measurements associated with calibrating the
detector angles in ACTPol.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, conference proceedings submitted to Proceedings
of SPIE; added reference in section 2 and merged repeated referenc
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Physical Properties of Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect Clusters on the Celestial Equator
We present the optical and X-ray properties of 68 galaxy clusters selected
via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect at 148 GHz by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope
(ACT). Our sample, from an area of 504 square degrees centered on the celestial
equator, is divided into two regions. The main region uses 270 square degrees
of the ACT survey that overlaps with the co-added ugriz imaging from the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) over Stripe 82 plus additional near-infrared pointed
observations with the Apache Point Observatory 3.5-meter telescope. We confirm
a total of 49 clusters to z~1.3, of which 22 (all at z>0.55) are new
discoveries. For the second region the regular-depth SDSS imaging allows us to
confirm 19 more clusters up to z~0.7, of which 10 systems are new. We present
the optical richness, photometric redshifts, and separation between the SZ
position and the brightest cluster galaxy (BCG). We find no significant offset
between the cluster SZ centroid and BCG location and a weak correlation between
optical richness and SZ-derived mass. We also present X-ray fluxes and
luminosities from the ROSAT All Sky Survey which confirm that this is a massive
sample. One of the newly discovered clusters, ACT-CL J0044.4+0113 at z=1.1
(photometric), has an integrated XMM-Newton X-ray temperature of kT_x=7.9+/-1.0
keV and combined mass of M_200a=8.2(-2.5,+3.3)x10^14 M_sun/h70 placing it among
the most massive and X-ray-hot clusters known at redshifts beyond z=1. We also
highlight the optically-rich cluster ACT-CL J2327.4-0204 (RCS2 2327) at z=0.705
(spectroscopic) as the most significant detection of the whole equatorial
sample with a Chandra-derived mass of M_200a=1.9(-0.4,+0.6)x10^15 M_sun/h70,
comparable to some of the most massive known clusters like "El Gordo" and the
Bullet Cluster.Comment: 18 pages, 12 figures. Accepted to the Astrophysical Journal. New
version includes minor changes in the accepted pape
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Cross Correlation with Planck maps
We present the temperature power spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background
obtained by cross-correlating maps from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT)
at 148 and 218 GHz with maps from the Planck satellite at 143 and 217 GHz, in
two overlapping regions covering 592 square degrees. We find excellent
agreement between the two datasets at both frequencies, quantified using the
variance of the residuals between the ACT power spectra and the ACTxPlanck
cross-spectra. We use these cross-correlations to calibrate the ACT data at 148
and 218 GHz, to 0.7% and 2% precision respectively. We find no evidence for
anisotropy in the calibration parameter. We compare the Planck 353 GHz power
spectrum with the measured amplitudes of dust and cosmic infrared background
(CIB) of ACT data at 148 and 218 GHz. We also compare planet and point source
measurements from the two experiments.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: the stellar content of galaxy clusters selected using the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect
We present a first measurement of the stellar mass component of galaxy
clusters selected via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect, using 3.6 um and 4.5
um photometry from the Spitzer Space Telescope. Our sample consists of 14
clusters detected by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), which span the
redshift range 0.27 < z < 1.07 (median z = 0.50), and have dynamical mass
measurements, accurate to about 30 per cent, with median M500 = 6.9 x 10^{14}
MSun. We measure the 3.6 um and 4.5 um galaxy luminosity functions, finding the
characteristic magnitude (m*) and faint-end slope (alpha) to be similar to
those for IR-selected cluster samples. We perform the first measurements of the
scaling of SZ-observables (Y500 and y0) with both brightest cluster galaxy
(BCG) stellar mass and total cluster stellar mass (M500star). We find a
significant correlation between BCG stellar mass and Y500 (E(z)^{-2/3} DA^2
Y500 ~ M*^{1.2 +/- 0.6}), although we are not able to obtain a strong
constraint on the slope of the relation due to the small sample size.
Additionally, we obtain E(z)^{-2/3} DA^2 Y500 ~ M500star^{1.0 +/- 0.6} for the
scaling with total stellar mass. The mass fraction in stars spans the range
0.006-0.034, with the second ranked cluster in terms of dynamical mass (ACT-CL
J0237-4939) having an unusually low total stellar mass and the lowest stellar
mass fraction. For the five clusters with gas mass measurements available in
the literature, we see no evidence for a shortfall of baryons relative to the
cosmic mean value.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS; 12 pages, 10 figure
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