An Instrument For Investigation of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation at Intermediate Angular Scales

Abstract

We describe an off-axis microwave telescope for observations of the anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation on angular scales between 0.5 deg and 3 deg. The receiver utilizes cryogenic high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) amplifiers and detects the total power in multiple 3 GHz wide channels. Both frequency and polarization information are recorded allowing discrimination between CMB radiation and potential foreground sources and allowing checks for systematic effects. The instrumental radiometric offset is small (~1 mK). Data are taken by rapidly sampling while sweeping the beam many beamwidths across the sky. After detection, a spatio-temporal filter is formed in software which optimizes the sensitivity in a multipole band in the presence of atmospheric fluctuations. Observations were made from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (SK), Canada during the winter of 1993 with six channels between 27.6 and 34.0 GHz, in 1994 with twelve channels between 27.6 and 44.1 GHz, and in 1995 with six channels between 38.2 and 44.1 GHz. The performance of the instrument and assessment of the atmospheric noise at this site are discussed.

latex file is called inst.tex. 30 pages with 14 Postscript figures. Uses aas2pp4.sty (included). Submitted to ApJ

References in corpus (2)

• Cosmological-Parameter Determination with Microwave Background Maps
• A Measurement of the Angular Power Spectrum of the Anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background

Cited by in corpus (31)

• Estimating the Power Spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• A Measurement of the Angular Power Spectrum of the CMB from l = 100 to 400
• The Robustness of Quintessence
• Radical Compression of Cosmic Microwave Background Data
• Towards a free-free template for CMB foregrounds
• Galactic microwave emission at degree angular scales
• Exhaustive Study of Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies in Quintessential Scenarios
• Instrument, Method, Brightness and Polarization Maps from the 2003 flight of BOOMERanG
• Non-Vacuum Initial States for Cosmological Perturbations of Quantum-Mechanical Origin
• A Measurement of the Angular Power Spectrum of the Microwave Background Made from the High Chilean Andes
• The Optical Design and Characterization of the Microwave Anisotropy Probe
• Large Angular Scale Polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background and the Feasibility of its Detection
• A Limit on the Polarized Anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background at Subdegree Angular Scales
• The QMAP and MAT/TOCO Experiments for Measuring Anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Mapping the CMB I: the first flight of the QMAP experiment
• Millimeter Wavelength Brightness Fluctuations of the Atmosphere Above the South Pole
• CMB Polarimetry using Correlation Receivers with the PIQUE and CAPMAP Experiments
• Comparing Cosmic Microwave Background Datasets
• Mapping the CMB II: the second flight of the QMAP experiment
• The MAP Satellite Feed Horns
• New Limits on the Polarized Anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background at Subdegree Angular Scales
• Recovery of Large Angular Scale CMB Polarization for Instruments Employing Variable-delay Polarization Modulators
• An Instrument for Investigating the Large Angular Scale Polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Modeling Bulk Atmospheric Motion
• Vector Reflectometry in a Beam Waveguide
• How accurately can we measure the hydrogen 2S->1S transition rate from the cosmological data?
• A Spin Modulated Telescope to Make Two Dimensional CMB Maps
• Polarization experiments
• CMB lensing forecasts for constraining the primordial perturbations: adding to the CMB temperature and polarization information
• Observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background and Implications for Cosmology and Large Scale Structure
• Optimisation of the Population Monte Carlo algorithm: Application to constraining isocurvature models with cosmic microwave background data