The Simons Observatory: Instrument Overview
Creators: name: Galitzki, Nicholas
name: Ali, Aamir
name: Arnold, Kam S.
name: Ashton, Peter C.
name: Austermann, Jason E.
name: Baccigalupi, Carlo
name: Baildon, Taylor
name: Barron, Darcy
name: Beall, James A.
name: Beckman, Shawn
name: Bruno, Sarah Marie M.
name: Bryan, Sean
name: Calisse, Paolo G.
name: Chesmore, Grace E.
name: Chinone, Yuji
name: Choi, Steve K.
name: Coppi, Gabriele
name: Crowley, Kevin D.
name: Crowley, Kevin T.
name: Cukierman, Ari
name: Devlin, Mark J.
name: Dicker, Simon
name: Dober, Bradley
name: Duff, Shannon M.
name: Dunkley, Jo
name: Fabbian, Giulio
name: Gallardo, Patricio A.
name: Gerbino, Martina
name: Goeckner-Wald, Neil
name: Golec, Joseph E.
name: Gudmundsson, Jon E.
name: Healy, Erin E.
name: Henderson, Shawn
name: Hill, Charles A.
name: Hilton, Gene C.
name: Ho, Shuay-Pwu Patty
name: Howe, Logan A.
name: Hubmayr, Johannes
name: Jeong, Oliver
name: Keating, Brian
name: Koopman, Brian J.
name: Kuichi, Kenji
name: Kusaka, Akito
name: Lashner, Jacob
name: Lee, Adrian T.
name: Li, Yaqiong
name: Limon, Michele
name: Lungu, Marius
name: Matsuda, Frederick
name: Mauskopf, Philip D.
name: May, Andrew J.
name: McCallum, Nialh
name: McMahon, Jeff
name: Nati, Federico
name: Niemack, Michael D.
name: Orlowski-Scherer, John L.
name: Parshley, Stephen C.
name: Piccirillo, Lucio
name: Rao, Mayuri Sathyanarayana
name: Raum, Christopher
name: Salatino, Maria
name: Seibert, Joseph S.
name: Sierra, Carlos
name: Silva-Feaver, Max
name: Simon, Sara M.
name: Staggs, Suzanne T.
name: Stevens, Jason R.
name: Suzuki, Aritoki
name: Teply, Grant
name: Thornton, Robert
name: Tsai, Calvin
name: Ullom, Joel N.
name: Vavagiakis, Eve M.
name: Vissers, Michael R.
name: Westbrook, Benjamin
name: Wollack, Edward J.
name: Xu, Zhilei
name: Zhu, Ningfeng
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2018
Subjects: subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The Simons Observatory (SO) will make precise temperature and polarization measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using a set of telescopes which will cover angular scales between 1 arcminute and tens of degrees, contain over 60,000 detectors, and observe at frequencies between 27 and 270 GHz. SO will consist of a 6 m aperture telescope coupled to over 30,000 transition-edge sensor bolometers along with three 42 cm aperture refractive telescopes, coupled to an additional 30,000+ detectors, all of which will be located in the Atacama Desert at an altitude of 5190 m. The powerful combination of large and small apertures in a CMB observatory will allow us to sample a wide range of angular scales over a common survey area. SO will measure fundamental cosmological parameters of our universe, constrain primordial fluctuations, find high redshift clusters via the Sunyaev-Zel`dovich effect, constrain properties of neutrinos, and trace the density and velocity of the matter in the universe over cosmic time. The complex set of technical and science requirements for this experiment has led to innovative instrumentation solutions which we will discuss. The large aperture telescope will couple to a cryogenic receiver that is 2.4 m in diameter and nearly 3 m long, creating a number of technical challenges. Concurrently, we are designing the array of cryogenic receivers housing the 42 cm aperture telescopes. We will discuss the sensor technology SO will use and we will give an overview of the drivers for and designs of the SO telescopes and receivers, with their cold optical components and detector arrays.