arXiv subjects

Frederick Matsuda

Publications and source records attributed to Frederick Matsuda.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Modified crossed Dragone optical design of the LiteBIRD low-frequency telescope

LiteBIRD is a JAXA-led international project aimed at measuring the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization with high sensitivity to detect polarization $B$ modes. This detection would provide evidence of inflation. LiteBIRD will observe the full sky for three years at the L2 Lagrange point of the Earth-Sun system across 34-448 GHz, and is expected to launch in the Japanese fiscal year of 2032. The Low-Frequency Telescope (LFT) will observe in the 34-161 GHz range implementing a modified crossed Dragone (MCD) reflective optical design optimized for high optical performance across a wide $18^{\circ} \times 9^{\circ}$ field-of-view (FOV). In this paper, we report the LFT optical design details including its optimization and optical performance assessed using optical simulations. The MCD design consists of a paraboloidal primary and a hyperboloidal secondary reflector with polynomial correction terms up to 7th order, achieving Strehl ratios $\ge 0.97$ at 161 GHz across the FOV. The Mueller QU (UQ) cross-polarization response is $\le -26.9$ dB at 34 GHz. The simulated beam sizes are $< 78^{\prime}$ at 34 GHz. The simulated sidelobe response for the direct and diffuse triple reflection sidelobes are estimated to be $< -57$ dB, and for the focused triple reflection sidelobe $< -37$ dB at 34 GHz. The LFT optical design satisfies all the optical requirements and specifications for the project, and is compatible with the LiteBIRD science goals.

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arXiv2024

Planar near-field measurements of specular and diffuse reflection of millimeter-wave absorbers

Mitigating the far sidelobes of a wide field-of-view telescope is one of the critical issues for polarization observation of the cosmic microwave background. Since even small reflections of stray light at the millimeter-wave absorbers inside the telescope may create nonnegligible far sidelobes, we have developed a method to measure the reflectance of millimeter-wave absorbers, including diffuse reflections. By applying the planar near-field measurement method to the absorbers, we have enabled two-dimensional diffuse-reflection measurements, in addition to characterizing specular reflection. We have measured the reflectance of five samples (TK RAM Large and Small Tiles and Eccosorb AN-72, HR-10, and LS-22) at two angles of incidence in the frequency range from 70 GHz to 110 GHz. Compared with conventional horn-to-horn measurements, we obtained a consistent specular reflectance with a higher precision, less affected by standing waves. We have demonstrated that the angular response and diffuse-to-specular reflectance ratio differ among various materials. The measurements also imply that some absorbers may affect the polarization direction when reflecting the incident waves.

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arXiv2023

The Simons Observatory: A fully remote controlled calibration system with a sparse wire grid for cosmic microwave background telescopes

For cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization observations, calibration of detector polarization angles is essential. We have developed a fully remote controlled calibration system with a sparse wire grid that reflects linearly polarized light along the wire direction. The new feature is a remote-controlled system for regular calibration, which has not been possible in sparse wire grid calibrators in past experiments. The remote control can be achieved by two electric linear actuators that load or unload the sparse wire grid into a position centered on the optical axis of a telescope between the calibration time and CMB observation. Furthermore, the sparse wire grid can be rotated by a motor. A rotary encoder and a gravity sensor are installed on the sparse wire grid to monitor the wire direction. They allow us to achieve detector angle calibration with expected systematic error of $0.08^{\circ}$. The calibration system will be installed in small-aperture telescopes at Simons Observatory.

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arXiv2023

The Simons Observatory: Beam characterization for the Small Aperture Telescopes

We use time-domain simulations of Jupiter observations to test and develop a beam reconstruction pipeline for the Simons Observatory Small Aperture Telescopes. The method relies on a map maker that estimates and subtracts correlated atmospheric noise and a beam fitting code designed to compensate for the bias caused by the map maker. We test our reconstruction performance for four different frequency bands against various algorithmic parameters, atmospheric conditions and input beams. We additionally show the reconstruction quality as function of the number of available observations and investigate how different calibration strategies affect the beam uncertainty. For all of the cases considered, we find good agreement between the fitted results and the input beam model within a ~1.5% error for a multipole range l = 30 - 700 and an ~0.5% error for a multipole range l = 50 - 200. We conclude by using a harmonic-domain component separation algorithm to verify that the beam reconstruction errors and biases observed in our analysis do not significantly bias the Simons Observatory r-measurement.

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arXiv2021

BoloCalc: a sensitivity calculator for the design of Simons Observatory

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.

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arXiv2021

The Simons Observatory: the Large Aperture Telescope (LAT)

The Simons Observatory (SO) is a Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiment to observe the microwave sky in six frequency bands from 30GHz to 290GHz. The Observatory -- at $\sim$5200m altitude -- comprises three Small Aperture Telescopes (SATs) and one Large Aperture Telescope (LAT) at the Atacama Desert, Chile. This research note describes the design and current status of the LAT along with its future timeline.

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arXiv2021

The Simons Observatory: Metamaterial Microwave Absorber (MMA) and its Cryogenic Applications

Controlling stray light at millimeter wavelengths requires special optical design and selection of absorptive materials that should be compatible with cryogenic operating environments. While a wide selection of absorptive materials exists, these typically exhibit high indices of refraction and reflect/scatter a significant fraction of light before absorption. For many lower index materials such as commercial microwave absorbers, their applications in cryogenic environments are challenging. In this paper, we present a new tool to control stray light: metamaterial microwave absorber tiles. These tiles comprise an outer metamaterial layer that approximates a lossy gradient index anti-reflection coating. They are fabricated via injection molding commercially available carbon-loaded polyurethane (25\% by mass). The injection molding technology enables mass production at low cost. The design of these tiles is presented, along with thermal tests to 1 K. Room temperature optical measurements verify their control of reflectance to less than 1\% up to 65$\circ$ angles of incidence, and control of wide angle scattering below 0.01\%. The dielectric properties of the bulk carbon-loaded material used in the tiles is also measured at different temperatures, confirming that the material maintains similar dielectric properties down to 3 K.

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arXiv2021

Simons Observatory Small Aperture Telescope overview

The Simons Observatory (SO) is a cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment from the Atacama Desert in Chile comprising three small-aperture telescopes (SATs) and one large-aperture telescope (LAT). In total, SO will field over 60,000 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. In this work, we focus on the SATs which are optimized to search for primordial gravitational waves that are detected as parity-odd polarization patterns called a B-modes on degree scales in the CMB. Each SAT employs a single optics tube with TES arrays operating at 100 mK. The high throughput optics system has a 42 cm aperture and a 35-degree field of view coupled to a 36 cm diameter focal plane. The optics consist of three metamaterial anti-re ection coated silicon lenses. Cryogenic ring baffles with engineered blackbody absorbers are installed in the optics tube to minimize the stray light. The entire optics tube is cooled to 1 K. A cryogenic continuously rotating half-wave plate near the sky side of the aperture stop helps to minimize the effect of atmospheric uctuations. The telescope warm baffling consists of a forebaffle, an elevation stage mounted co-moving shield, and a fixed ground shield that together control the far side-lobes and mitigates ground-synchronous systematics. We present the status of the SAT development.

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arXiv2020

Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Lensing Power Spectrum from Two Years of POLARBEAR Data

We present a measurement of the gravitational lensing deflection power spectrum reconstructed with two seasons cosmic microwave background polarization data from the POLARBEAR experiment. Observations were taken at 150 GHz from 2012 to 2014 which survey three patches of sky totaling 30 square degrees. We test the consistency of the lensing spectrum with a Cold Dark Matter (CDM) cosmology and reject the no-lensing hypothesis at a confidence of 10.9 sigma including statistical and systematic uncertainties. We observe a value of A_L = 1.33 +/- 0.32 (statistical) +/- 0.02 (systematic) +/- 0.07 (foreground) using all polarization lensing estimators, which corresponds to a 24% accurate measurement of the lensing amplitude. Compared to the analysis of the first year data, we have improved the breadth of both the suite of null tests and the error terms included in the estimation of systematic contamination.

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arXiv2020

The POLARBEAR Fourier Transform Spectrometer Calibrator and Spectroscopic Characterization of the POLARBEAR Instrument

We describe the Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) used for in-field testing of the POLARBEAR receiver, an experiment located in the Atacama Desert of Chile which measures the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization. The POLARBEAR-FTS (PB-FTS) is a Martin-Puplett interferometer designed to couple to the Huan Tran Telescope (HTT) on which the POLARBEAR receiver is installed. The PB-FTS measured the spectral response of the POLARBEAR receiver with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) $>20$ for $\sim$69% of the focal plane detectors due to three features: a high throughput of 15.1 steradian cm$^{2}$, optimized optical coupling to the POLARBEAR optics using a custom designed output parabolic mirror, and a continuously modulated output polarizer. The PB-FTS parabolic mirror is designed to mimic the shape of the 2.5 m-diameter HTT primary reflector which allows for optimum optical coupling to the POLARBEAR receiver, reducing aberrations and systematics. One polarizing grid is placed at the output of the PB-FTS, and modulated via continuous rotation. This modulation allows for decomposition of the signal into different harmonics that can be used to probe potentially pernicious sources of systematic error in a polarization-sensitive instrument. The high throughput and continuous output polarizer modulation features are unique compared to other FTS calibrators used in the CMB field. In-field characterization of the POLARBEAR receiver was accomplished using the PB-FTS in April 2014. We discuss the design, construction, and operation of the PB-FTS and present the spectral characterization of the POLARBEAR receiver. We introduce future applications for the PB-FTS in the next-generation CMB experiment, the Simons Array.

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arXiv2020

Small Aperture Telescopes for the Simons Observatory

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 $μ$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 $σ\left(r\right) \approx 0.003$.

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arXiv2019

Evidence for the Cross-correlation between Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Lensing from POLARBEAR and Cosmic Shear from Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam

We present the first measurement of cross-correlation between the lensing potential, reconstructed from cosmic microwave background (CMB) {\it polarization} data, and the cosmic shear field from galaxy shapes. This measurement is made using data from the POLARBEAR CMB experiment and the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey. By analyzing an 11~deg$^2$ overlapping region, we reject the null hypothesis at 3.5$σ$\ and constrain the amplitude of the {\bf cross-spectrum} to $\widehat{A}_{\rm lens}=1.70\pm 0.48$, where $\widehat{A}_{\rm lens}$ is the amplitude normalized with respect to the Planck~2018{} prediction, based on the flat $Λ$ cold dark matter cosmology. The first measurement of this {\bf cross-spectrum} without relying on CMB temperature measurements is possible due to the deep POLARBEAR map with a noise level of ${\sim}$6\,$μ$K-arcmin, as well as the deep HSC data with a high galaxy number density of $n_g=23\,{\rm arcmin^{-2}}$. We present a detailed study of the systematics budget to show that residual systematics in our results are negligibly small, which demonstrates the future potential of this cross-correlation technique.

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arXiv2018

Development of Calibration Strategies for the Simons Observatory

The Simons Observatory (SO) is a set of cosmic microwave background instruments that will be deployed in the Atacama Desert in Chile. The key science goals include setting new constraints on cosmic inflation, measuring large scale structure with gravitational lensing, and constraining neutrino masses. Meeting these science goals with SO requires high sensitivity and improved calibration techniques. In this paper, we highlight a few of the most important instrument calibrations, including spectral response, gain stability, and polarization angle calibrations. We present their requirements for SO and experimental techniques that can be employed to reach those requirements.

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arXiv2018

The Simons Observatory: Instrument Overview

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.

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arXiv2017

Performance of a continuously rotating half-wave plate on the POLARBEAR telescope

A continuously rotating half-wave plate (CRHWP) is a promising tool to improve the sensitivity to large angular scales in cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization measurements. With a CRHWP, single detectors can measure three of the Stokes parameters, $I$, $Q$ and $U$, thereby avoiding the set of systematic errors that can be introduced by mismatches in the properties of orthogonal detector pairs. We focus on the implementation of CRHWPs in large aperture telescopes (i.e. the primary mirror is larger than the current maximum half-wave plate diameter of $\sim$0.5 m), where the CRHWP can be placed between the primary mirror and focal plane. In this configuration, one needs to address the intensity to polarization ($I{\rightarrow}P$) leakage of the optics, which becomes a source of 1/f noise and also causes differential gain systematics that arise from CMB temperature fluctuations. In this paper, we present the performance of a CRHWP installed in the POLARBEAR experiment, which employs a Gregorian telescope with a 2.5 m primary illumination pattern. The CRHWP is placed near the prime focus between the primary and secondary mirrors. We find that the $I{\rightarrow}P$ leakage is larger than the expectation from the physical properties of our primary mirror, resulting in a 1/f knee of 100 mHz. The excess leakage could be due to imperfections in the detector system, i.e. detector non-linearity in the responsivity and time-constant. We demonstrate, however, that by subtracting the leakage correlated with the intensity signal, the 1/f noise knee frequency is reduced to 32 mHz ($\ell \sim$39 for our scan strategy), which is very promising to probe the primordial B-mode signal. We also discuss methods for further noise subtraction in future projects where the precise temperature control of instrumental components and the leakage reduction will play a key role.

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arXiv2016

Making maps of Cosmic Microwave Background polarization for B-mode studies: the POLARBEAR example

Analysis of cosmic microwave background (CMB) datasets typically requires some filtering of the raw time-ordered data. Filtering is frequently used to minimize the impact of low frequency noise, atmospheric contributions and/or scan synchronous signals on the resulting maps. In this work we explicitly construct a general filtering operator, which can unambiguously remove any set of unwanted modes in the data, and then amend the map-making procedure in order to incorporate and correct for it. We show that such an approach is mathematically equivalent to the solution of a problem in which the sky signal and unwanted modes are estimated simultaneously and the latter are marginalized over. We investigate the conditions under which this amended map-making procedure can render an unbiased estimate of the sky signal in realistic circumstances. We then study the effects of time-domain filtering on the noise correlation structure in the map domain, as well as impact it may have on the performance of the popular pseudo-spectrum estimators. We conclude that although maps produced by the proposed estimators arguably provide the most faithful representation of the sky possible given the data, they may not straightforwardly lead to the best constraints on the power spectra of the underlying sky signal and special care may need to be taken to ensure this is the case. By contrast, simplified map-makers which do not explicitly correct for time-domain filtering, but leave it to subsequent steps in the data analysis, may perform equally well and be easier and faster to implement. We focus on polarization-sensitive measurements targeting the B-mode component of the CMB signal and apply the proposed methods to realistic simulations based on characteristics of an actual CMB polarization experiment, POLARBEAR.

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arXiv2016

Design and development of an ambient-temperature continuously-rotating achromatic half-wave plate for CMB polarization modulation on the POLARBEAR-2 experiment

We describe the development of an ambient-temperature continuously-rotating half-wave plate (HWP) for study of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization by the POLARBEAR-2 (PB2) experiment. Rapid polarization modulation suppresses 1/f noise due to unpolarized atmospheric turbulence and improves sensitivity to degree-angular-scale CMB fluctuations where the inflationary gravitational wave signal is thought to exist. A HWP modulator rotates the input polarization signal and therefore allows a single polarimeter to measure both linear polarization states, eliminating systematic errors associated with differencing of orthogonal detectors. PB2 projects a 365-mm-diameter focal plane of 7,588 dichroic, 95/150 GHz transition-edge-sensor bolometers onto a 4-degree field of view that scans the sky at $\sim$ 1 degree per second. We find that a 500-mm-diameter ambient-temperature sapphire achromatic HWP rotating at 2 Hz is a suitable polarization modulator for PB2. We present the design considerations for the PB2 HWP, the construction of the HWP optical stack and rotation mechanism, and the performance of the fully-assembled HWP instrument. We conclude with a discussion of HWP polarization modulation for future Simons Array receivers.

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arXiv2016

POLARBEAR Constraints on Cosmic Birefringence and Primordial Magnetic Fields

We constrain anisotropic cosmic birefringence using four-point correlations of even-parity $E$-mode and odd-parity $B$-mode polarization in the cosmic microwave background measurements made by the POLARization of the Background Radiation (POLARBEAR) experiment in its first season of observations. We find that the anisotropic cosmic birefringence signal from any parity-violating processes is consistent with zero. The Faraday rotation from anisotropic cosmic birefringence can be compared with the equivalent quantity generated by primordial magnetic fields if they existed. The POLARBEAR nondetection translates into a 95% confidence level (C.L.) upper limit of 93 nanogauss (nG) on the amplitude of an equivalent primordial magnetic field inclusive of systematic uncertainties. This four-point correlation constraint on Faraday rotation is about 15 times tighter than the upper limit of 1380 nG inferred from constraining the contribution of Faraday rotation to two-point correlations of $B$-modes measured by Planck in 2015. Metric perturbations sourced by primordial magnetic fields would also contribute to the $B$-mode power spectrum. Using the POLARBEAR measurements of the $B$-mode power spectrum (two-point correlation), we set a 95% C.L. upper limit of 3.9 nG on primordial magnetic fields assuming a flat prior on the field amplitude. This limit is comparable to what was found in the Planck 2015 two-point correlation analysis with both temperature and polarization. We perform a set of systematic error tests and find no evidence for contamination. This work marks the first time that anisotropic cosmic birefringence or primordial magnetic fields have been constrained from the ground at subdegree scales.

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