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The Simons Observatory (SO) will observe the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from Cerro Toco in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The observatory consists of three 0.5 m Small Aperture Telescopes (SATs) and one 6 m Large Aperture Telescope (LAT), covering six frequency bands centering around 30, 40, 90, 150, 230, and 280 GHz. The SO observations will transform the understanding of our universe by characterizing the properties of the early universe, measuring the number of relativistic species and the mass of neutrinos, improving our understanding of galaxy evolution, and constraining the properties of cosmic reionization. As a critical instrument, the Large Aperture Telescope Receiver (LATR) is designed to cool $\sim$ 60,000 transition-edge sensors (TES) to $<$ 100 mK on a 1.7 m diameter focal plane. The unprecedented scale of the LATR drives a complex design. In this paper, we will first provide an overview of the LATR design. Integration and validation of the LATR design are discussed in detail, including mechanical strength, optical alignment, and cryogenic performance of the five cryogenic stages (80 K, 40 K, 4 K, 1 K, and 100 mK). We will also discuss the microwave-multiplexing ($\mu$Mux) readout system implemented in the LATR and demonstrate the operation of dark prototype TES bolometers. The $\mu$Mux readout technology enables one coaxial loop to read out $\mathcal{O}(10^3)$ TES detectors. Its implementation within the LATR serves as a critical validation for the complex RF chain design. The successful validation of the LATR performance is not only a critical milestone within the Simons Observatory, it also provides a valuable reference for other experiments, e.g. CCAT-prime and CMB-S4., Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures, submitted to the 2020 SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation

The Simons Observatory (SO) will be a cosmic microwave background (CMB) survey experiment with three small-aperture telescopes and one large-aperture telescope, which will observe from the Atacama Desert in Chile. In total, SO will field $\sim$70,000 transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers in six spectral bands centered between 27 and 280 GHz in order to achieve the sensitivity necessary to measure or constrain numerous cosmological quantities. The SO Universal Focal Plane Modules (UFMs) each contain a 150 mm diameter TES detector array, horn or lenslet optical coupling, cold readout components, and magnetic shielding. SO will use a microwave SQUID multiplexing ($\mu$MUX) readout at an initial multiplexing factor of $\sim$1000; the cold (100 mK) readout components are packaged in a $\mu$MUX readout module, which is part of the UFM, and can also be characterized independently. The 100 mK stage TES bolometer arrays and microwave SQUIDs are sensitive to magnetic fields, and their measured response will vary with the degree to which they are magnetically shielded. We present measurements of the magnetic pickup of test microwave SQUID multiplexers as a study of various shielding configurations for the Simons Observatory. We discuss how these measurements motivated the material choice and design of the UFM magnetic shielding., Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, conference proceedings submitted to IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

We measure the cross-correlation between galaxy weak lensing data from the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS-1000, DR4) and cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT, DR4) and the Planck Legacy survey. We use two samples of source galaxies, selected with photometric redshifts, $(0.1

We use gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to measure the mass of the most distant blindly-selected sample of galaxy clusters on which a lensing measurement has been performed to date. In CMB data from the the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and the Planck satellite, we detect the stacked lensing effect from 677 near-infrared-selected galaxy clusters from the Massive and Distant Clusters of WISE Survey (MaDCoWS), which have a mean redshift of $ \langle z \rangle = 1.08$. There are no current optical weak lensing measurements of clusters that match the distance and average mass of this sample. We detect the lensing signal with a significance of $4.2 \sigma$. We model the signal with a halo model framework to find the mean mass of the population from which these clusters are drawn. Assuming that the clusters follow Navarro-Frenk-White density profiles, we infer a mean mass of $\langle M_{500c}\rangle = \left(1.7 \pm 0.4 \right)\times10^{14}\,\mathrm{M}_\odot$. We consider systematic uncertainties from cluster redshift errors, centering errors, and the shape of the NFW profile. These are all smaller than 30% of our reported uncertainty. This work highlights the potential of CMB lensing to enable cosmological constraints from the abundance of distant clusters populating ever larger volumes of the observable Universe, beyond the capabilities of optical weak lensing measurements., Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, matches version accepted in ApJL, code available at https://github.com/ACTCollaboration/madcows_lensing/

The thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects (tSZ, kSZ) probe the thermodynamic properties of the circumgalactic and intracluster medium (CGM and ICM) of galaxies, groups, and clusters, since they are proportional, respectively, to the integrated electron pressure and momentum along the line-of-sight. We present constraints on the gas thermodynamics of CMASS galaxies in the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) using new measurements of the kSZ and tSZ signals obtained in a companion paper. Combining kSZ and tSZ measurements, we measure within our model the amplitude of energy injection $\epsilon M_\star c^2$, where $M_\star$ is the stellar mass, to be $\epsilon=(40\pm9)\times10^{-6}$, and the amplitude of the non-thermal pressure profile to be $\alpha_{\rm Nth}<0.2$ (2$\sigma$), indicating that less than 20% of the total pressure within the virial radius is due to a non-thermal component. We estimate the effects of including baryons in the modeling of weak-lensing galaxy cross-correlation measurements using the best-fit density profile from the kSZ measurement. Our estimate reduces the difference between the original theoretical model and the weak-lensing galaxy cross-correlation measurements in arXiv:1611.08606 by half but does not fully reconcile it. Comparing the tSZ measurements to cosmological simulations, we find that simulations underestimate the CGM pressure at large radii while they fare better in comparison with the kSZ measurements. This suggests that the energy injected via feedback models in the simulations that we compared against does not sufficiently heat the gas at these radii. We do not find significant disagreement at smaller radii. These measurements provide novel tests of current and future simulations. This work demonstrates the power of joint, high signal-to-noise kSZ and tSZ observations, upon which future cross-correlation studies will improve., Comment: Corrected error in the algorithm that calculates the kSZ temperature profile for a given GNFW density model. The value of $\log_{\rm10} \rho_0$ changed by 0.75$\sigma$ in Tab.II and Fig.2, and affected the results in the left panels of Fig. 6. Conclusions are unchanged. Erratum published at https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.107.049903

The scattering of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons off the free-electron gas in galaxies and clusters leaves detectable imprints on high resolution CMB maps: the thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects (tSZ and kSZ respectively). We use combined microwave maps from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) DR5 and Planck in combination with the CMASS and LOWZ galaxy catalogs from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS DR10 and DR12), to study the gas associated with these galaxy groups. Using individual reconstructed velocities, we perform a stacking analysis and reject the no-kSZ hypothesis at 6.5$\sigma$, the highest significance to date. This directly translates into a measurement of the electron number density profile, and thus of the gas density profile. Despite the limited signal to noise, the measurement shows at high significance that the gas density profile is more extended than the dark matter density profile, for any reasonable baryon abundance (formally $>90\sigma$ for the cosmic baryon abundance). We simultaneously measure the tSZ signal, i.e. the electron thermal pressure profile of the same CMASS objects, and reject the no-tSZ hypothesis at 10$\sigma$. We combine tSZ and kSZ measurements to estimate the electron temperature to 20% precision in several aperture bins, and find it comparable to the virial temperature. In a companion paper, we analyze these measurements to constrain the gas thermodynamics and the properties of feedback inside galaxy groups. We present the corresponding LOWZ measurements in this paper, ruling out a null kSZ (tSZ) signal at 2.9 (13.9)$\sigma$, and leave their interpretation to future work. Our stacking software ThumbStack is publicly available at https://github.com/EmmanuelSchaan/ThumbStack and directly applicable to future Simons Observatory and CMB-S4 data., Comment: Accepted in Physical Review D, Editors' Suggestion

CMB-S4---the next-generation ground-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment---is set to significantly advance the sensitivity of CMB measurements and enhance our understanding of the origin and evolution of the Universe, from the highest energies at the dawn of time through the growth of structure to the present day. Among the science cases pursued with CMB-S4, the quest for detecting primordial gravitational waves is a central driver of the experimental design. This work details the development of a forecasting framework that includes a power-spectrum-based semi-analytic projection tool, targeted explicitly towards optimizing constraints on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r$, in the presence of Galactic foregrounds and gravitational lensing of the CMB. This framework is unique in its direct use of information from the achieved performance of current Stage 2--3 CMB experiments to robustly forecast the science reach of upcoming CMB-polarization endeavors. The methodology allows for rapid iteration over experimental configurations and offers a flexible way to optimize the design of future experiments given a desired scientific goal. To form a closed-loop process, we couple this semi-analytic tool with map-based validation studies, which allow for the injection of additional complexity and verification of our forecasts with several independent analysis methods. We document multiple rounds of forecasts for CMB-S4 using this process and the resulting establishment of the current reference design of the primordial gravitational-wave component of the Stage-4 experiment, optimized to achieve our science goals of detecting primordial gravitational waves for $r > 0.003$ at greater than $5\sigma$, or, in the absence of a detection, of reaching an upper limit of $r < 0.001$ at $95\%$ CL., Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures, 9 tables, submitted to ApJ. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1907.04473

We present LCDM cosmological parameter constraints obtained from delensed microwave background power spectra. Lensing maps from a subset of DR4 data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) are used to undo the lensing effect in ACT spectra observed at 150 and 98 GHz. At 150 GHz, we remove the lensing distortion with an effective efficiency of 30% (TT), 30% (EE), 26% (TE) and 20% (BB); this results in detections of the delensing effect at 8.7 sigma (TT), 5.1 sigma (EE), 2.6 sigma (TE), and 2.4 sigma (BB) significance. The combination of 150 and 98 GHz TT, EE, and TE delensed spectra is well fit by a standard LCDM model. We also measure the shift in best-fit parameters when fitting delensed versus lensed spectra; while this shift does not inform our ability to measure cosmological parameters, it does provide a three-way consistency check among the lensing inferred from the best-fit parameters, the lensing in the CMB power spectrum, and the reconstructed lensing map. This shift is predicted to be zero when fitting with the correct model since both lensed and delensed spectra originate from the same region of sky. Fitting with a LCDM model and marginalizing over foregrounds, we find that the shift in cosmological parameters is consistent with zero. Our results show that gravitational lensing of the microwave background is internally consistent within the framework of the standard cosmological model., Comment: 29 pages, 17 figures, version matches that accepted by JCAP

This paper presents a maximum-likelihood algorithm for combining sky maps with disparate sky coverage, angular resolution and spatially varying anisotropic noise into a single map of the sky. We use this to merge hundreds of individual maps covering the 2008-2018 ACT observing seasons, resulting in by far the deepest ACT maps released so far. We also combine the maps with the full Planck maps, resulting in maps that have the best features of both Planck and ACT: Planck's nearly white noise on intermediate and large angular scales and ACT's high-resolution and sensitivity on small angular scales. The maps cover over 18,000 square degrees, nearly half the full sky, at 100, 150 and 220 GHz. They reveal 4,000 optically-confirmed clusters through the Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect (SZ) and 18,500 point source candidates at $> 5\sigma$, the largest single collection of SZ clusters and millimeter wave sources to date. The multi-frequency maps provide millimeter images of nearby galaxies and individual Milky Way nebulae, and even clear detections of several nearby stars. Other anticipated uses of these maps include, for example, thermal SZ and kinematic SZ cluster stacking, CMB cluster lensing and galactic dust science. The method itself has negligible bias. However, due to the preliminary nature of some of the component data sets, we caution that these maps should not be used for precision cosmological analysis. The maps are part of ACT DR5, and are available on LAMBDA at https://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/act/actpol_prod_table.cfm. There is also a web atlas at https://phy-act1.princeton.edu/public/snaess/actpol/dr5/atlas., Comment: 38 pages, 29 figures, data release on lambda. Published in JCAP

We present new arcminute-resolution maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature and polarization anisotropy from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, using data taken from 2013-2016 at 98 and 150 GHz. The maps cover more than 17,000 deg$^2$, the deepest 600 deg$^2$ with noise levels below 10 $\mu$K-arcmin. We use the power spectrum derived from almost 6,000 deg$^2$ of these maps to constrain cosmology. The ACT data enable a measurement of the angular scale of features in both the divergence-like polarization and the temperature anisotropy, tracing both the velocity and density at last-scattering. From these one can derive the distance to the last-scattering surface and thus infer the local expansion rate, $H_0$. By combining ACT data with large-scale information from WMAP we measure $H_0 = 67.6 \pm 1.1$ km/s/Mpc, at 68% confidence, in excellent agreement with the independently-measured Planck satellite estimate (from ACT alone we find $H_0 = 67.9 \pm 1.5$ km/s/Mpc). The $\Lambda$CDM model provides a good fit to the ACT data, and we find no evidence for deviations: both the spatial curvature, and the departure from the standard lensing signal in the spectrum, are zero to within 1$\sigma$; the number of relativistic species, the primordial Helium fraction, and the running of the spectral index are consistent with $\Lambda$CDM predictions to within $1.5 - 2.2\sigma$. We compare ACT, WMAP, and Planck at the parameter level and find good consistency; we investigate how the constraints on the correlated spectral index and baryon density parameters readjust when adding CMB large-scale information that ACT does not measure. The DR4 products presented here will be publicly released on the NASA Legacy Archive for Microwave Background Data Analysis., Comment: 33 pages, 24 figures, products available on the NASA LAMBDA website, version accepted for publication in JCAP

We present the temperature and polarization angular power spectra of the CMB measured by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) from 5400 deg$^2$ of the 2013-2016 survey, which covers $>$15000 deg$^2$ at 98 and 150 GHz. For this analysis we adopt a blinding strategy to help avoid confirmation bias and, related to this, show numerous checks for systematic error done before unblinding. Using the likelihood for the cosmological analysis we constrain secondary sources of anisotropy and foreground emission, and derive a "CMB-only" spectrum that extends to $\ell=4000$. At large angular scales, foreground emission at 150 GHz is $\sim$1% of TT and EE within our selected regions and consistent with that found by Planck. Using the same likelihood, we obtain the cosmological parameters for $\Lambda$CDM for the ACT data alone with a prior on the optical depth of $\tau=0.065\pm0.015$. $\Lambda$CDM is a good fit. The best-fit model has a reduced $\chi^2$ of 1.07 (PTE=0.07) with $H_0=67.9\pm1.5$ km/s/Mpc. We show that the lensing BB signal is consistent with $\Lambda$CDM and limit the celestial EB polarization angle to $\psi_P =-0.07^{\circ}\pm0.09^{\circ}$. We directly cross correlate ACT with Planck and observe generally good agreement but with some discrepancies in TE. All data on which this analysis is based will be publicly released., Comment: 44 pages, 27 figures, products available on the NASA LAMBDA website, version accepted for publication in JCAP

We construct cosmic microwave background lensing mass maps using data from the 2014 and 2015 seasons of observations with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). These maps cover 2100 square degrees of sky and overlap with a wide variety of optical surveys. The maps are signal dominated on large scales and have fidelity such that their correlation with the cosmic infrared background is clearly visible by eye. We also create lensing maps with thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich contamination removed using a novel cleaning procedure that only slightly degrades the lensing signal-to-noise ratio. The cross-spectrum between the cleaned lensing map and the BOSS CMASS galaxy sample is detected at $10$-$\sigma$ significance, with an amplitude of $A=1.02 \pm 0.10$ relative to the Planck best-fit LCDM cosmological model with fiducial linear galaxy bias. Our measurement lays the foundation for lensing cross-correlation science with current ACT data and beyond., Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, lensing map products will be made available on LAMBDA as part of the upcoming ACT data release, v2 corrects author list

The Simons Observatory (SO) is an upcoming polarization-sensitive Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiment on the Cerro Toco Plateau (Chile) with large overlap with other optical and infrared surveys (e.g., DESI, LSST, HSC). To enable the readout of \bigO(10,000) detectors in each of the four telescopes of SO, we will employ the microwave SQUID multiplexing technology. With a targeted multiplexing factor of \bigO{(1,000)}, microwave SQUID multiplexing has never been deployed on the scale needed for SO. Here we present the design of the cryogenic coaxial cable and RF component chain that connects room temperature readout electronics to superconducting resonators that are coupled to Transition Edge Sensor bolometers operating at sub-Kelvin temperatures. We describe design considerations including cryogenic RF component selection, system linearity, noise, and thermal power dissipation., Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures

One of the most important checks for systematic errors in CMB studies is the cross correlation of maps made by independent experiments. In this paper we report on the cross correlation between maps from the Atacama B-mode Search (ABS) and Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) experiments in both temperature and polarization. These completely different measurements have a clear correlation with each other and with the Planck satellite in both the EE and TE spectra at $\ell<400$ over the roughly $1100$ deg$^2$ common to all three. The TB, EB, and BB cross spectra are consistent with noise. Exploiting such cross-correlations will be important for future experiments operating in Chile that aim to probe the $30<\ell<8,000$ range., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures. For an interactive demonstration of the methods, see https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1CnMGLn-J3pySv8A9ffNWDSlXlJWMrp2W

We present new constraints on anisotropic birefringence of the cosmic microwave background polarization using two seasons of data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope covering $456$ square degrees of sky. The birefringence power spectrum, measured using a curved-sky quadratic estimator, is consistent with zero. Our results provide the tightest current constraint on birefringence over a range of angular scales between $5$ arcminutes and $9$ degrees. We improve previous upper limits on the amplitude of a scale-invariant birefringence power spectrum by a factor of between $2$ and $3$. Assuming a nearly-massless axion field during inflation, our result is equivalent to a $2\,\sigma$ upper limit on the Chern-Simons coupling constant between axions and photons of $g_{\alpha\gamma}<4.0\times 10^{-2}/H_I$ where $H_I$ is the inflationary Hubble scale., Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, Accepted for publication in PRD

We examine the stacked thermal Sunyaev-Zel\text{'}dovich (SZ) signals for a sample of galaxy cluster candidates from the Spitzer-HETDEX Exploratory Large Area (SHELA) Survey, which are identified in combined optical and infrared SHELA data using the redMaPPer algorithm. We separate the clusters into three richness bins, with average photometric redshifts ranging from 0.70 to 0.80. The richest bin shows a clear temperature decrement at 148 GHz in the Atacama Cosmology Telescope data, which we attribute to the SZ effect. All richness bins show an increment at 220 GHz, which we attribute to dust emission from cluster galaxies. We correct for dust emission using stacked profiles from Herschel Stripe 82 data, and allow for synchrotron emission using stacked profiles created by binning source fluxes from NVSS data. We see dust emission in all three richness bins, but can only confidently detect the SZ decrement in the highest richness bin, finding $M_{500}$ = $8.7^{+1.7}_{-1.3} \times 10^{13} M_\odot$. Neglecting the correction for dust depresses the inferred mass by 26 percent, indicating a partial fill-in of the SZ decrement from thermal dust and synchrotron emission by the cluster member galaxies. We compare our corrected SZ masses to two redMaPPer mass--richness scaling relations and find that the SZ mass is lower than predicted by the richness. We discuss possible explanations for this discrepancy, and note that the SHELA richnesses may differ from previous richness measurements due to the inclusion of IR data in redMaPPer., Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures. Submitted to MNRAS

The Simons Observatory (SO) is an upcoming cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment located on Cerro Toco, Chile, that will map the microwave sky in temperature and polarization in six frequency bands spanning 27 to 285 GHz. SO will consist of one 6-meter Large Aperture Telescope (LAT) fielding $\sim$30,000 detectors and an array of three 0.42-meter Small Aperture Telescopes (SATs) fielding an additional 30,000 detectors. This synergy will allow for the extremely sensitive characterization of the CMB over angular scales ranging from an arcmin to tens of degrees, enabling a wide range of scientific output. Here we focus on the SATs targeting degree angular scales with successive dichroic instruments observing at Mid-Frequency (MF: 93/145 GHz), Ultra-High-Frequency (UHF: 225/285 GHz), and Low-Frequency (LF: 27/39 GHz). The three SATs will be able to map $\sim$10% of the sky to a noise level of 2 $\mu$K-arcmin when combining 93 and 145 GHz. The multiple frequency bands will allow the CMB to be separated from galactic foregrounds (primarily synchrotron and dust), with the primary science goal of characterizing the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r$, at a target level of $\sigma \left(r\right) \approx 0.003$.

The Simons Observatory is building both large (6 m) and small (0.5 m) aperture telescopes in the Atacama desert in Chile to observe the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation with unprecedented sensitivity. Simons Observatory telescopes in total will use over 60,000 transition edge sensor (TES) detectors spanning center frequencies between 27 and 285 GHz and operating near 100 mK. TES devices have been fabricated for the Simons Observatory by NIST, Berkeley, and HYPRES/SeeQC corporation. Iterations of these devices have been tested cryogenically in order to inform the fabrication of further devices, which will culminate in the final TES designs to be deployed in the field. The detailed design specifications have been independently iterated at each fabrication facility for particular detector frequencies. We present test results for prototype devices, with emphasis on NIST high frequency detectors. A dilution refrigerator was used to achieve the required temperatures. Measurements were made both with 4-lead resistance measurements and with a time domain Superconducting Quantum Interference Device (SQUID) multiplexer system. The SQUID readout measurements include analysis of current vs voltage (IV) curves at various temperatures, square wave bias step measurements, and detector noise measurements. Normal resistance, superconducting critical temperature, saturation power, thermal and natural time constants, and thermal properties of the devices are extracted from these measurements., Comment: 9 Pages, 5 figures, Low Temperature Detectors 19

Optimal analyses of many signals in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) require map-level extraction of individual components in the microwave sky, rather than measurements at the power spectrum level alone. To date, nearly all map-level component separation in CMB analyses has been performed exclusively using satellite data. In this paper, we implement a component separation method based on the internal linear combination (ILC) approach which we have designed to optimally account for the anisotropic noise (in the 2D Fourier domain) often found in ground-based CMB experiments. Using this method, we combine multi-frequency data from the Planck satellite and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter (ACTPol) to construct the first wide-area, arcminute-resolution component-separated maps (covering approximately 2100 sq. deg.) of the CMB temperature anisotropy and the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect sourced by the inverse-Compton scattering of CMB photons off hot, ionized gas. Our ILC pipeline allows for explicit deprojection of various contaminating signals, including a modified blackbody approximation of the cosmic infrared background (CIB) spectral energy distribution. The cleaned CMB maps will be a useful resource for CMB lensing reconstruction, kinematic SZ cross-correlations, and primordial non-Gaussianity studies. The tSZ maps will be used to study the pressure profiles of galaxies, groups, and clusters through cross-correlations with halo catalogs, with dust contamination controlled via CIB deprojection. The data products described in this paper are available on LAMBDA., Comment: 24 pages, 11 figures, matches version accepted by PRD. Data products are available on LAMBDA at https://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/act/act_dr4_derived_maps_get.cfm

We provide an overview of the science case, instrument configuration and project plan for the next-generation ground-based cosmic microwave background experiment CMB-S4, for consideration by the 2020 Decadal Survey., Comment: Project White Paper submitted to the 2020 Decadal Survey, 10 pages plus references. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1907.04473

In this paper we probe the hot, post-shock gas component of quasar-driven winds through the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect. Combining datasets from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, the $\textit{Herschel}$ Space Observatory, and the Very Large Array, we measure average spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of 109,829 optically-selected, radio quiet quasars from 1.4~GHz to 3000~GHz in six redshift bins between $0.31.91$, we measure the tSZ effect at $3.8\sigma$ significance with an amplitude corresponding to a total thermal energy of $3.1\times10^{60}$ ergs. If this energy is due to virialized gas, then our measurement implies quasar host halo masses are $\sim6\times10^{12}~h^{-1}$M$_\odot$. Alternatively, if the host dark matter halo masses are $\sim2\times10^{12}~h^{-1}$M$_\odot$ as some measurements suggest, then we measure a $>$90 per cent excess in the thermal energy over that expected due to virialization. If the measured SZ effect is primarily due to hot bubbles from quasar-driven winds, we find that $(5^{+1.2}_{-1.3}$) per cent of the quasar bolometric luminosity couples to the intergalactic medium over a fiducial quasar lifetime of 100 Myr. An additional source of tSZ may be correlated structure, and further work is required to separate the contributions. At $z\leq1.91$, we detect emission at 95 and 148~GHz that is in excess of thermal dust and optically thin synchrotron emission. We investigate potential sources of this excess emission, finding that CO line emission and an additional optically thick synchrotron component are the most viable candidates., Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, accepted to MNRAS

The Simons Observatory (SO) is a ground-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment sited on Cerro Toco in the Atacama Desert in Chile that promises to provide breakthrough discoveries in fundamental physics, cosmology, and astrophysics. Supported by the Simons Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and with contributions from collaborating institutions, SO will see first light in 2021 and start a five year survey in 2022. SO has 287 collaborators from 12 countries and 53 institutions, including 85 students and 90 postdocs. The SO experiment in its currently funded form ('SO-Nominal') consists of three 0.4 m Small Aperture Telescopes (SATs) and one 6 m Large Aperture Telescope (LAT). Optimized for minimizing systematic errors in polarization measurements at large angular scales, the SATs will perform a deep, degree-scale survey of 10% of the sky to search for the signature of primordial gravitational waves. The LAT will survey 40% of the sky with arc-minute resolution. These observations will measure (or limit) the sum of neutrino masses, search for light relics, measure the early behavior of Dark Energy, and refine our understanding of the intergalactic medium, clusters and the role of feedback in galaxy formation. With up to ten times the sensitivity and five times the angular resolution of the Planck satellite, and roughly an order of magnitude increase in mapping speed over currently operating ("Stage 3") experiments, SO will measure the CMB temperature and polarization fluctuations to exquisite precision in six frequency bands from 27 to 280 GHz. SO will rapidly advance CMB science while informing the design of future observatories such as CMB-S4., Comment: Astro2020 Decadal Project Whitepaper. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1808.07445

We present the science case, reference design, and project plan for the Stage-4 ground-based cosmic microwave background experiment CMB-S4., Comment: 287 pages, 82 figures

We present a catalog of 510 radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGN, primarily blazars) and 287 dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) detected by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope at $>5\sigma$ significance in bands centered on 148 GHz (2 mm), 218 GHz (1.4 mm) and 277 GHz (1.1 mm), from a 480 square degrees strip on the celestial equator with additional (360 square degrees) shallower fields. Combining the deepest available 218 GHz wide-field imaging, 277 GHz data, and multi-band filtering yields the most sensitive wide-field millimeter-wave DSFG selection to date with rms noise referenced to 218 GHz reaching $<2$ mJy. We developed techniques to remove Galactic contamination from the extragalactic catalog, yielding 321 additional Galactic sources. We employ a new flux debiasing method that handles the heterogeneous sample selection due to Galactic cuts. We present spectral properties and source counts of the AGN and DSFGs. The DSFG spectra depart from an optically thin modified blackbody between 218 GHz and 277 GHz, consistent with optically thick emission or an additional cold dust component. For bright AGN, the inter-year RMS fractional deviation in flux density from source variability is $\sim40\%$. We report 8$-$2870 mJy source counts for AGN and 8$-$90 mJy source counts for DSFGs, the latter probing both the brighter, lensed population and the fainter, unlensed population. At 277 GHz we report the first source counts measurements at these flux densities, finding an excess above most model count predictions. Finally, we select thirty of the brightest DSFGs for multi-frequency study as candidate high-$z$ lensed systems., Comment: 42 pages. Accepted version. Catalogs and maps available at https://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/act/act_prod_table.cfm

The hot dense environment of the early universe is known to have produced large numbers of baryons, photons, and neutrinos. These extreme conditions may have also produced other long-lived species, including new light particles (such as axions or sterile neutrinos) or gravitational waves. The gravitational effects of any such light relics can be observed through their unique imprint in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the large-scale structure, and the primordial light element abundances, and are important in determining the initial conditions of the universe. We argue that future cosmological observations, in particular improved maps of the CMB on small angular scales, can be orders of magnitude more sensitive for probing the thermal history of the early universe than current experiments. These observations offer a unique and broad discovery space for new physics in the dark sector and beyond, even when its effects would not be visible in terrestrial experiments or in astrophysical environments. A detection of an excess light relic abundance would be a clear indication of new physics and would provide the first direct information about the universe between the times of reheating and neutrino decoupling one second later., Comment: 5 pages + references; 1 figure; science white paper submitted to the Astro2020 decadal survey

Our current understanding of the Universe is established through the pristine measurements of structure in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the distribution and shapes of galaxies tracing the large scale structure (LSS) of the Universe. One key ingredient that underlies cosmological observables is that the field that sources the observed structure is assumed to be initially Gaussian with high precision. Nevertheless, a minimal deviation from Gaussianityis perhaps the most robust theoretical prediction of models that explain the observed Universe; itis necessarily present even in the simplest scenarios. In addition, most inflationary models produce far higher levels of non-Gaussianity. Since non-Gaussianity directly probes the dynamics in the early Universe, a detection would present a monumental discovery in cosmology, providing clues about physics at energy scales as high as the GUT scale., Comment: 5 pages + references; Submitted to the Astro2020 call for science white papers. This version: fixed author list

We report on measurements of the polarization of extragalactic sources at 148 GHz made during the first two seasons of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarization (ACTPol) survey. The survey covered 680 deg$^{2}$ of the sky on the celestial equator. Polarization measurements of 169 intensity-selected sources brighter than 30 mJy, that are predominantly Active Galactic Nuclei, are presented. Above a total flux of 215 mJy where the noise bias removal in the polarization measurement is reliable, we detect 26 sources, 14 of which have a detection of linear polarization at greater than 3$\sigma_{p}$ significance. The distribution of the fractional polarization as a function of total source intensity is analyzed. Our result is consistent with the scenario that the fractional polarization of our measured radio source population is independent of total intensity down to the limits of our measurements and well described by a Gaussian distribution with a mean fractional polarization $p=0.028\pm$0.005 and standard deviation $\sigma_{\mathrm{p}}=0.054$, truncated at $p=0$. Extrapolating this model for the distribution of source polarization below the ACTPol detection threshold, we predict that one could get a clean measure of the E-mode polarization power spectrum of the microwave background out to $\ell=6000$ with 1 $\mu$K-arcminute maps over 10$\%$ of the sky from a future survey. We also study the spectral energy distribution of the total and polarized source flux densities by cross-matching with low radio frequency catalogs. We do not find any correlation between the spectral indices for total flux and polarized flux.

The Simons Observatory (SO) will measure the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in both temperature and polarization over a wide range of angular scales and frequencies from 27-270 GHz with unprecedented sensitivity. One technology for coupling light onto the $\sim$50 detector wafers that SO will field is spline-profiled feedhorns, which offer tunability between coupling efficiency and control of beam polarization leakage effects. We will present efforts to scale up feedhorn production for SO and their viability for future CMB experiments, including direct-machining metal feedhorn arrays and laser machining stacked Si arrays.

In this proceeding, we present studies of instrumental systematic effects for the Simons Obsevatory (SO) that are associated with the detector system and its interaction with the full SO experimental systems. SO will measure the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature and polarization anisotropies over a wide range of angular scales in six bands with bandcenters spanning from 27 GHz to 270 GHz. We explore effects including intensity-to-polarization leakage due to coupling optics, bolometer nonlinearity, uncalibrated gain variations of bolometers, and readout crosstalk. We model the level of signal contamination, discuss proposed mitigation schemes, and present instrument requirements to inform the design of SO and future CMB projects., Comment: Proceeding from SPIE Astronomical Telescopes+Instrumentation 2018 (27 pages, 13 figures) v2: Added HEALPix reference

The Simons Observatory (SO) will make precision temperature and polarization measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using a series of telescopes which will cover angular scales between one arcminute and tens of degrees and sample frequencies between 27 and 270 GHz. Here we present the current design of the large aperture telescope receiver (LATR), a 2.4 m diameter cryostat that will be mounted on the SO 6 m telescope and will be the largest CMB receiver to date. The cryostat size was chosen to take advantage of the large focal plane area having high Strehl ratios, which is inherent to the Cross-Dragone telescope design. The LATR will be able to accommodate thirteen optics tubes, each having a 36 cm diameter aperture and illuminating several thousand transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers. This set of equipment will provide an opportunity to make measurements with unparalleled sensitivity. However, the size and complexity of the LATR also pose numerous technical challenges. In the following paper, we present the design of the LATR and include how we address these challenges. The solutions we develop in the process of designing the LATR will be informative for the general CMB community, and for future CMB experiments like CMB-S4.

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 $\mu$K-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, to measure the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r$, at a target level of $\sigma(r)=0.003$. The LAT will map ~40% of the sky at arcminute angular resolution to an expected white noise level of 6 $\mu$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., Comment: 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

The Simons Observatory (SO) is a new experiment that aims to measure the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in temperature and polarization. SO will measure the polarized sky over a large range of microwave frequencies and angular scales using a combination of small ($\sim0.5 \, \rm m$) and large ($\sim 6\, \rm m $) aperture telescopes and will be located in the Atacama Desert in Chile. This work is part of a series of papers studying calibration, sensitivity, and systematic errors for SO. In this paper, we discuss current efforts to model optical systematic effects, how these have been used to guide the design of the SO instrument, and how these studies can be used to inform instrument design of future experiments like CMB-S4. While optical systematics studies are underway for both the small aperture and large aperture telescopes, we limit the focus of this paper to the more mature large aperture telescope design for which our studies include: pointing errors, optical distortions, beam ellipticity, cross-polar response, instrumental polarization rotation and various forms of sidelobe pickup., Comment: Poster presented at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2018

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.

The Advanced ACTPol (AdvACT) upgrade to the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) features arrays of aluminum manganese transition-edge sensors (TESes) optimized for ground-based observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Array testing shows highly responsive detectors with anticipated in-band noise performance under optical loading. We report on TES parameters measured with impedance data taken on a subset of TESes. We then compare modeled noise spectral densities to measurements. We find excess noise at frequencies around 100 Hz, nearly outside of the signal band of CMB measurements. In addition, we describe full-array noise measurements in the laboratory and in the field for two new AdvACT mid-frequency arrays, sensitive at bands centered on 90 and 150 GHz, and data for the high-frequency array (150/230 GHz) as deployed., Comment: Accepted for publication in Journal of Low Temperature Physics for LTD-17 special issue

The Simons Observatory (SO) is an upcoming experiment that will study temperature and polarization fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from the Atacama Desert in Chile. SO will field both a large aperture telescope (LAT) and an array of small aperture telescopes (SATs) that will observe in six bands with center frequencies spanning from 27 to 270~GHz. Key considerations during the SO design phase are vast, including the number of cameras per telescope, focal plane magnification and pixel density, in-band optical power and camera throughput, detector parameter tolerances, and scan strategy optimization. To inform the SO design in a rapid, organized, and traceable manner, we have created a Python-based sensitivity calculator with several state-of-the-art features, including detector-to-detector optical white-noise correlations, a handling of simulated and measured bandpasses, and propagation of low-level parameter uncertainties to uncertainty in on-sky noise performance. We discuss the mathematics of the sensitivity calculation, the calculator's object-oriented structure and key features, how it has informed the design of SO, and how it can enhance instrument design in the broader CMB community, particularly for CMB-S4., Comment: Submitted to the Proceedings of SPIE: Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy IX

We present weak-lensing measurements using the first-year data from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Strategic Survey Program on the Subaru telescope for eight galaxy clusters selected through their thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) signal measured at 148 GHz with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter experiment. The overlap between the two surveys in this work is 33.8 square degrees, before masking bright stars. The signal-to-noise ratio of individual cluster lensing measurements ranges from 2.2 to 8.7, with a total of 11.1 for the stacked cluster weak-lensing signal. We fit for an average weak-lensing mass distribution using three different profiles, a Navarro-Frenk-White profile, a dark-matter-only emulated profile, and a full cosmological hydrodynamic emulated profile. We interpret the differences among the masses inferred by these models as a systematic error of 10\%, which is currently smaller than the statistical error. We obtain the ratio of the SZ-estimated mass to the lensing-estimated mass (the so-called hydrostatic mass bias $1-b$) of $0.74^{+0.13}_{-0.12}$, which is comparable to previous SZ-selected clusters from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and from the {\sl Planck} Satellite. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for cosmological parameters inferred from cluster abundances compared to cosmic microwave background primary anisotropy measurements., Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables, comments are welcome

The Atacama B-mode Search (ABS) is an experiment designed to measure cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization at large angular scales ($\ell>40$). It operated from the ACT site at 5190~m elevation in northern Chile at 145 GHz with a net sensitivity (NEQ) of 41 $\mu$K$\sqrt{\rm s}$. It employed an ambient-temperature sapphire half-wave plate rotating at 2.55 Hz to modulate the incident polarization signal and reduce systematic effects. We report here on the analysis of data from a 2400 deg$^2$ patch of sky centered at declination $-42^\circ$ and right ascension $25^\circ$. We perform a blind analysis. After unblinding, we find agreement with the Planck TE and EE measurements on the same region of sky. We marginally detect polarized dust emission and give an upper limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio of $r<2.3$ (95% cl) with the equivalent of 100 on-sky days of observation. We also present a new measurement of the polarization of Tau A and introduce new methods associated with HWP-based observations., Comment: 38 pages, 11 figures

Most secondary sources of cosmic microwave background anisotropy (radio sources, dusty galaxies -DSFGs-, thermal Sunyaev Zel'dovich -tSZ- distortions from hot gas, and gravitational lensing) are highly non-Gaussian. Statistics beyond the power spectrum are therefore potentially important sources of information about the physics of these processes. We combine data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and with data from the Planck satellite (only using Planck data in the overlapping region) to constrain the amplitudes of a set of theoretical bispectrum templates from the tSZ effect, DSFGs, gravitational lensing, and radio galaxies. We make a strong detection of radio galaxies (>5$\sigma$) and have hints of non-Gaussianity arising from the tSZ effect, DSFGs, from cross-correlations between the tSZ effect and DSFGs and from cross-correlations among the tSZ effect, DSFGs and radio galaxies. These results suggest that the same halos host radio sources, DSFGs, and have tSZ signal. We present a new method to calculate the non-Gaussian contributions to the template covariances. Using this method we find significant non-Gaussian contributions to the variance and covariance of our templates, with templates involving the tSZ effect most effected. Strong degeneracies exist between the various sources at the current noise levels. In light of these degeneracies, combined with theoretical uncertainty in the templates, these results are a demonstration of this technique. With these caveats, we demonstrate the utility of future bispectrum measurements by using the tSZ bispectrum measurement to constrain a combination of the amplitude of matter fluctuations and the matter density to be $\sigma_8 \Omega_m^{0.17}=0.65^{+0.05}_{-0.06}$. Improvements in signal to noise from upcoming observations will enable the separation of bispectrum components and robust constraints on cosmological parameters., Comment: 33 pages, 12 figures, Accepted in JCAP. Abstract is abridged

The Advanced ACTPol upgrade on the Atacama Cosmology Telescope aims to improve the measurement of the cosmic microwave background anisotropies and polarization, using four new dichroic detector arrays fabricated on 150-mm silicon wafers. These bolometric cameras use AlMn transition-edge sensors, coupled to feedhorns with orthomode transducers for polarization sensitivity. The first deployed camera is sensitive to both 150 GHz and 230 GHz. Here we present the lab characterization of the thermal parameters and optical efficiencies for the two newest fielded arrays, each sensitive to both 90 GHz and 150 GHz. We provide assessments of the parameter uniformity across each array with evaluation of systematic uncertainties. Lastly, we show the arrays' initial performance in the field., Comment: Version accepted for publication by Journal of Low Temperature Physics

Advanced ACTPol (AdvACT) is a third generation polarization upgrade to the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, designed to observe the cosmic microwave background (CMB). AdvACT expands on the 90 and 150 GHz transition edge sensor (TES) bolometer arrays of the ACT Polarimeter (ACTPol), adding both high frequency (HF, 150/230 GHz) and low frequency (LF, 27/39 GHz) multichroic arrays. The addition of the high and low frequency detectors allows for the characterization of synchrotron and spinning dust emission at the low frequencies and foreground emission from galactic dust and dusty star forming galaxies at the high frequencies. The increased spectral coverage of AdvACT will enable a wide range of CMB science, such as improving constraints on dark energy, the sum of the neutrino masses, and the existence of primordial gravitational waves. The LF array will be the final AdvACT array, replacing one of the MF arrays for a single season. Prior to the fabrication of the final LF detector array, we designed and characterized prototype TES bolometers. Detector geometries in these prototypes are varied in order to inform and optimize the bolometer designs for the LF array, which requires significantly lower noise levels and saturation powers (as low as ${\sim}1$ pW) than the higher frequency detectors. Here we present results from tests of the first LF prototype TES detectors for AdvACT, including measurements of the saturation power, critical temperature, thermal conductance and time constants. We also describe the modifications to the time-division SQUID readout architecture compared to the MF and HF arrays., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, conference proceedings submitted to Journal of Low Temperature Physics; revised Fig. 2, Table 1, and text in Sec. 2, 3, author list corrected

We present a catalog of 182 galaxy clusters detected through the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope in a contiguous 987.5 deg$^{2}$ field. The clusters were detected as SZ decrements by applying a matched filter to 148 GHz maps that combine the original ACT equatorial survey with data from the first two observing seasons using the ACTPol receiver. Optical/IR confirmation and redshift measurements come from a combination of large public surveys and our own follow-up observations. Where necessary, we measured photometric redshifts for clusters using a pipeline that achieves accuracy $\Delta z/(1 + z)=0.015$ when tested on SDSS data. Under the assumption that clusters can be described by the so-called Universal Pressure Profile and its associated mass-scaling law, the full signal-to-noise > 4 sample spans the mass range $1.6 < M^{\rm UPP}_{\rm 500c}/10^{14}{\rm M}_{\odot}<9.1$, with median $M^{\rm UPP}_{\rm 500c}=3.1 \times 10^{14}$ M$_{\odot}$. The sample covers the redshift range $0.1 < z < 1.4$ (median $z = 0.49$) and 28 clusters are new discoveries (median $z = 0.80$). We compare our catalog with other overlapping cluster samples selected using the SZ, optical,and X-ray wavelengths. We find the ratio of the UPP-based SZ mass to richness-based weak-lensing mass is $\langle M^{\rm UPP}_{\rm 500c} \rangle / \langle M^{\rm \lambda WL}_{\rm 500c} \rangle = 0.68 \pm 0.11$. After applying this calibration, the mass distribution for clusters with $M_{\rm 500c} > 4 \times 10^{14}$ M$_{\odot}$ is consistent with the number of such clusters found in the South Pole Telescope SZ survey., Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJS; 38 pages, 31 figures; a .fits table that combines tables A1-A3 is available from https://acru.ukzn.ac.za/~mjh/ACTPol_E-D56Catalog (and will be posted on LAMBDA soon)