Simons Observatory: Characterization of the Large Aperture Telescope Receiver

Understand

The Simons Observatory (SO) is a ground-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) survey experiment that currently consists of three 0.42m small-aperture telescopes (SATs) and one 6m large-aperture telescope (LAT), located at an elevation of 5200m in the Atacama Desert in Chile.

• At the LAT's focal plane, SO will install >62,000 transition-edge sensor detectors across 13 optics tubes (OTs) within the Large Aperture Telescope Receiver (LATR), the largest cryogenic camera ever built to observe the CMB.
• Here we report on the validation of the LATR in the laboratory and the subsequent dark testing and validation within the LAT.
• We show that the LATR meets cryogenic, optical, and detector specifications required for high-sensitivity measurements of the CMB.