The Simons Observatory: Science goals and forecasts
Creators: name: The Simons Observatory Collaboration
name: Ade, Peter
name: Aguirre, James
name: Ahmed, Zeeshan
name: Aiola, Simone
name: Ali, Aamir
name: Alonso, David
name: Alvarez, Marcelo A.
name: Arnold, Kam
name: Ashton, Peter
name: Austermann, Jason
name: Awan, Humna
name: Baccigalupi, Carlo
name: Baildon, Taylor
name: Barron, Darcy
name: Battaglia, Nick
name: Battye, Richard
name: Baxter, Eric
name: Bazarko, Andrew
name: Beall, James A.
name: Bean, Rachel
name: Beck, Dominic
name: Beckman, Shawn
name: Beringue, Benjamin
name: Bianchini, Federico
name: Boada, Steven
name: Boettger, David
name: Bond, J. Richard
name: Borrill, Julian
name: Brown, Michael L.
name: Bruno, Sarah Marie
name: Bryan, Sean
name: Calabrese, Erminia
name: Calafut, Victoria
name: Calisse, Paolo
name: Carron, Julien
name: Challinor, Anthony
name: Chesmore, Grace
name: Chinone, Yuji
name: Chluba, Jens
name: Cho, Hsiao-Mei Sherry
name: Choi, Steve
name: Coppi, Gabriele
name: Cothard, Nicholas F.
name: Coughlin, Kevin
name: Crichton, Devin
name: Crowley, Kevin D.
name: Crowley, Kevin T.
name: Cukierman, Ari
name: D'Ewart, John M.
name: Dünner, Rolando
name: de Haan, Tijmen
name: Devlin, Mark
name: Dicker, Simon
name: Didier, Joy
name: Dobbs, Matt
name: Dober, Bradley
name: Duell, Cody J.
name: Duff, Shannon
name: Duivenvoorden, Adri
name: Dunkley, Jo
name: Dusatko, John
name: Errard, Josquin
name: Fabbian, Giulio
name: Feeney, Stephen
name: Ferraro, Simone
name: Fluxà, Pedro
name: Freese, Katherine
name: Frisch, Josef C.
name: Frolov, Andrei
name: Fuller, George
name: Fuzia, Brittany
name: Galitzki, Nicholas
name: Gallardo, Patricio A.
name: Ghersi, Jose Tomas Galvez
name: Gao, Jiansong
name: Gawiser, Eric
name: Gerbino, Martina
name: Gluscevic, Vera
name: Goeckner-Wald, Neil
name: Golec, Joseph
name: Gordon, Sam
name: Gralla, Megan
name: Green, Daniel
name: Grigorian, Arpi
name: Groh, John
name: Groppi, Chris
name: Guan, Yilun
name: Gudmundsson, Jon E.
name: Han, Dongwon
name: Hargrave, Peter
name: Hasegawa, Masaya
name: Hasselfield, Matthew
name: Hattori, Makoto
name: Haynes, Victor
name: Hazumi, Masashi
name: He, Yizhou
name: Healy, Erin
name: Henderson, Shawn W.
name: Hervias-Caimapo, Carlos
name: Hill, Charles A.
name: Hill, J. Colin
name: Hilton, Gene
name: Hilton, Matt
name: Hincks, Adam D.
name: Hinshaw, Gary
name: Hložek, Renée
name: Ho, Shirley
name: Ho, Shuay-Pwu Patty
name: Howe, Logan
name: Huang, Zhiqi
name: Hubmayr, Johannes
name: Huffenberger, Kevin
name: Hughes, John P.
name: Ijjas, Anna
name: Ikape, Margaret
name: Irwin, Kent
name: Jaffe, Andrew H.
name: Jain, Bhuvnesh
name: Jeong, Oliver
name: Kaneko, Daisuke
name: Karpel, Ethan D.
name: Katayama, Nobuhiko
name: Keating, Brian
name: Kernasovskiy, Sarah S.
name: Keskitalo, Reijo
name: Kisner, Theodore
name: Kiuchi, Kenji
name: Klein, Jeff
name: Knowles, Kenda
name: Koopman, Brian
name: Kosowsky, Arthur
name: Krachmalnicoff, Nicoletta
name: Kuenstner, Stephen E.
name: Kuo, Chao-Lin
name: Kusaka, Akito
name: Lashner, Jacob
name: Lee, Adrian
name: Lee, Eunseong
name: Leon, David
name: Leung, Jason S. -Y.
name: Lewis, Antony
name: Li, Yaqiong
name: Li, Zack
name: Limon, Michele
name: Linder, Eric
name: Lopez-Caraballo, Carlos
name: Louis, Thibaut
name: Lowry, Lindsay
name: Lungu, Marius
name: Madhavacheril, Mathew
name: Mak, Daisy
name: Maldonado, Felipe
name: Mani, Hamdi
name: Mates, Ben
name: Matsuda, Frederick
name: Maurin, Loïc
name: Mauskopf, Phil
name: May, Andrew
name: McCallum, Nialh
name: McKenney, Chris
name: McMahon, Jeff
name: Meerburg, P. Daniel
name: Meyers, Joel
name: Miller, Amber
name: Mirmelstein, Mark
name: Moodley, Kavilan
name: Munchmeyer, Moritz
name: Munson, Charles
name: Naess, Sigurd
name: Nati, Federico
name: Navaroli, Martin
name: Newburgh, Laura
name: Nguyen, Ho Nam
name: Niemack, Michael
name: Nishino, Haruki
name: Orlowski-Scherer, John
name: Page, Lyman
name: Partridge, Bruce
name: Peloton, Julien
name: Perrotta, Francesca
name: Piccirillo, Lucio
name: Pisano, Giampaolo
name: Poletti, Davide
name: Puddu, Roberto
name: Puglisi, Giuseppe
name: Raum, Chris
name: Reichardt, Christian L.
name: Remazeilles, Mathieu
name: Rephaeli, Yoel
name: Riechers, Dominik
name: Rojas, Felipe
name: Roy, Anirban
name: Sadeh, Sharon
name: Sakurai, Yuki
name: Salatino, Maria
name: Rao, Mayuri Sathyanarayana
name: Schaan, Emmanuel
name: Schmittfull, Marcel
name: Sehgal, Neelima
name: Seibert, Joseph
name: Seljak, Uros
name: Sherwin, Blake
name: Shimon, Meir
name: Sierra, Carlos
name: Sievers, Jonathan
name: Sikhosana, Precious
name: Silva-Feaver, Maximiliano
name: Simon, Sara M.
name: Sinclair, Adrian
name: Siritanasak, Praween
name: Smith, Kendrick
name: Smith, Stephen R.
name: Spergel, David
name: Staggs, Suzanne T.
name: Stein, George
name: Stevens, Jason R.
name: Stompor, Radek
name: Suzuki, Aritoki
name: Tajima, Osamu
name: Takakura, Satoru
name: Teply, Grant
name: Thomas, Daniel B.
name: Thorne, Ben
name: Thornton, Robert
name: Trac, Hy
name: Tsai, Calvin
name: Tucker, Carole
name: Ullom, Joel
name: Vagnozzi, Sunny
name: van Engelen, Alexander
name: Van Lanen, Jeff
name: Van Winkle, Daniel D.
name: Vavagiakis, Eve M.
name: Vergès, Clara
name: Vissers, Michael
name: Wagoner, Kasey
name: Walker, Samantha
name: Ward, Jon
name: Westbrook, Ben
name: Whitehorn, Nathan
name: Williams, Jason
name: Williams, Joel
name: Wollack, Edward J.
name: Xu, Zhilei
name: Yu, Byeonghee
name: Yu, Cyndia
name: Zago, Fernando
name: Zhang, Hezi
name: Zhu, Ningfeng
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2018
Subjects: subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The Simons Observatory (SO) is a new cosmic microwave background experiment being built on Cerro Toco in Chile, due to begin observations in the early 2020s. We describe the scientific goals of the experiment, motivate the design, and forecast its performance. SO will measure the temperature and polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background in six frequency bands: 27, 39, 93, 145, 225 and 280 GHz. The initial configuration of SO will have three small-aperture 0.5-m telescopes (SATs) and one large-aperture 6-m telescope (LAT), with a total of 60,000 cryogenic bolometers. Our key science goals are to characterize the primordial perturbations, measure the number of relativistic species and the mass of neutrinos, test for deviations from a cosmological constant, improve our understanding of galaxy evolution, and constrain the duration of reionization. The SATs will target the largest angular scales observable from Chile, mapping ~10% of the sky to a white noise level of 2 $μ$K-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, to measure the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r$, at a target level of $σ(r)=0.003$. The LAT will map ~40% of the sky at arcminute angular resolution to an expected white noise level of 6 $μ$K-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, overlapping with the majority of the LSST sky region and partially with DESI. With up to an order of magnitude lower polarization noise than maps from the Planck satellite, the high-resolution sky maps will constrain cosmological parameters derived from the damping tail, gravitational lensing of the microwave background, the primordial bispectrum, and the thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects, and will aid in delensing the large-angle polarization signal to measure the tensor-to-scalar ratio. The survey will also provide a legacy catalog of 16,000 galaxy clusters and more than 20,000 extragalactic sources.
description: This paper presents an overview of the Simons Observatory science goals, details about the instrument will be presented in a companion paper. The author contribution to this paper is available at https://simonsobservatory.org/publications.php (Abstract abridged) -- matching version published in JCAP