Centers and Institutes
Published February 17, 2022 | Version v1
Journal article Open

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Modeling bulk atmospheric motion

Creators

  • 1. Princeton University
  • 2. Universidad Catlica de la Santsima Concepcin
  • 3. Cardiff University
  • 4. Cornell University
  • 5. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
  • 6. University of Chicago
  • 7. Flatiron Institute
  • 8. University of Toronto
  • 9. European Southern Observatory
  • 10. Haverford College
  • 11. Stanford University
  • 12. Domain Associates, LLC
  • 13. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
  • 14. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Description

Fluctuating atmospheric emission is a dominant source of noise for ground-based millimeter-wave observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropy at angular scales $≳ 0.5°$. We present a model of the atmosphere as a discrete set of emissive turbulent layers that move with respect to the observer with a horizontal wind velocity. After introducing a statistic derived from the time-lag dependent correlation function for detector pairs in an array, referred to as the pair-lag, we use this model to estimate the aggregate angular motion of the atmosphere derived from time-ordered data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). We find that estimates derived from ACT's CMB observations alone agree with those derived from satellite weather data that additionally include a height-dependent horizontal wind velocity and water vapor density. We also explore the dependence of the measured atmospheric noise spectrum on the relative angle between the wind velocity and the telescope scan direction. In particular, we find that varying the scan velocity changes the noise spectrum in a predictable way. Computing the pair-lag statistic opens up new avenues for understanding how atmospheric fluctuations impact measurements of the CMB anisotropy.

Files

PhysRevD.105.042004.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1103/PhysRevD.105.042004
Other
oai:uchicago.tind.io:13064

Funding

National Science Foundation
AST-0408698
National Science Foundation
AST-0965625
National Science Foundation
AST-1440226
National Science Foundation
PHY-0355328
National Science Foundation
PHY-0855887
National Science Foundation
PHY-1214379
Princeton University
University of Pennsylvania
Canada Foundation for Innovation
Professor David Spergel
Misrahi and Wilkinson funds
UCSC
DINREG 06/2017
National Science Foundation
AST-2001866
University of Toronto
Sutton Family Chair in Science, Christianity, and Cultures
University of Toronto
Faculty of Arts and Science
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

UChicago Information

Division(s)
Physical Sciences Division
Center(s) or Institute(s)
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics