Astrophysics

A dual-pass differential Fabry-Perot interferometer (DPDFPI) is one candidate of the interferometer configurations utilized in future Fabry-Perot type space gravitational wave antennas, such as Deci-hertz Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory. In this paper, the working principle of the DPDFPI has been investigated and necessity to adjust the absolute length of the cavity for the operation of the DPDFPI has been found. In addition, using the 55-cm-long prototype, the operation of the DPDFPI has been demonstrated for the first time and it has been confirmed that the adjustment of the absolute arm length reduces the cavity detuning as expected. This work provides the proof of concept of the DPDFPI for application to the future Fabry-Perot type space gravitational wave antennas.

Quantum vacuum fluctuations fundamentally limit the precision of optical measurements, such as those in gravitational-wave detectors. Injection of conventional squeezed vacuum can be used to reduce quantum noise in the readout quadrature, but this reduction is at the cost of increasing noise in the orthogonal quadrature. For detectors near the limits imposed by quantum radiation pressure noise (QRPN), both quadratures impact the measurement, and the benefits of conventional squeezing are limited. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of a critically-coupled 16m optical cavity to diminish anti-squeezing at frequencies below 90Hz where it exacerbates QRPN, while preserving beneficial squeezing at higher frequencies. This is called an amplitude filter cavity, and it is useful for avoiding degradation of detector sensitivity at low frequencies. The attenuation from the cavity also provides technical advantages such as mitigating backscatter.

We present design equations for a two-element closely-spaced interferometer for measuring the noise temperature of a uniform sky. Such an interferometer is useful for observing highly diffuse radio sources such as the Milky Way and Cosmological signals. We develop a simple equivalent circuit based on radiophysics and antenna theory to describe the interactions between key design parameters such as antenna self and mutual impedance and noise parameters of the receiver; the latter is considered internal noise. This approach straightforwardly facilitates design studies as the response of the uniform signal and the systematic error due to internal noise coupling can be analyzed using the same equivalent circuit. The equivalent circuit shows that mutual coherence due to internal noise coupling is non-negligible and an inherent property of a closely-spaced interferometer. A realistic example design involving two closely-spaced horizontal dipoles over a lossy ground for Cosmological signal detection from 50 to 100 MHz is discussed as an illustration.

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 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, as outlined in The Simons Observatory Collaboration et al. (2019). These telescopes require 33 highly transparent, large aperture, refracting optics. To this end, we developed mechanically robust, highly efficient, metamaterial anti-reflection (AR) coatings with octave bandwidth coverage for silicon optics up to 46 cm in diameter for the 22-55, 75-165, and 190-310 GHz bands. We detail the design, the manufacturing approach to fabricate the SO lenses, their performance, and possible extensions of metamaterial AR coatings to optical elements made of harder materials such as alumina.

We present the design and performance of a polychromatic polarization modulator for the CRisp Imaging SpectroPolarimeter (CRISP) Fabry-Perot tunable narrow-band imaging spectropolarimer at the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST). We discuss the design process in depth, compare two possible modulator designs through a tolerance analysis, and investigate thermal sensitivity of the selected design. The trade-offs and procedures described in this paper are generally applicable in the development of broadband polarization modulators. The modulator was built and has been operational since 2015. Its measured performance is close to optimal between 500 and 900~nm, and differences between the design and as-built modulator are largely understood. We show some example data, and briefly review scientific work that used data from SST/CRISP and this modulator.

This paper describes the design, implementation, and verification of a test-bed for determining the noise temperature of radio antennas operating between 400-800MHz. The requirements for this test-bed were driven by the HIRAX experiment, which uses antennas with embedded amplification, making system noise characterization difficult in the laboratory. The test-bed consists of two large cylindrical cavities, each containing radio-frequency (RF) absorber held at different temperatures (300K and 77K), allowing a measurement of system noise temperature through the well-known 'Y-factor' method. The apparatus has been constructed at Yale, and over the course of the past year has undergone detailed verification measurements. To date, three preliminary noise temperature measurement sets have been conducted using the system, putting us on track to make the first noise temperature measurements of the HIRAX feed and perform the first analysis of feed repeatability.

The Auger Muon Infill Ground Array (AMIGA) is part of the AugerPrime upgrade of the Pierre Auger Observatory. It consists of particle counters buried 2.3 m underground next to the water-Cherenkov stations that form the 23.5 km 2 large infilled array. The reduced distance between detectors in this denser area allows the lowering of the energy threshold for primary cosmic ray reconstruction down to about 10 17 eV. At the depth of 2.3 m the electromagnetic component of cosmic ray showers is almost entirely absorbed so that the buried scintillators provide an independent and direct measurement of the air showers muon content. This work describes the design and implementation of the AMIGA embedded system, which provides centralized control, data acquisition and environment monitoring to its detectors. The presented system was firstly tested in the engineering array phase ended in 2017, and lately selected as the final design to be installed in all new detectors of the production phase. The system was proven to be robust and reliable and has worked in a stable manner since its first deployment.

High throughput optical system is defined to possess the features of both large field of view (FOV) and high resolution. However, it is full of challenge to design such a telescope with the two conflicting specifications at the same time. In this paper, we propose a method to design a high throughput telescope based on the classical off-axis Three-Mirror Anastigmat (TMA) configuration by introducing a scanning mechanism. We derive the optimum initial design for the TMA system with no primary aberrations through characteristic ray tracing. During the design process, a real exit pupil is necessitated to accommodate the scanning mirror. By gradually increasing the system's FOV during the optimization procedure, we finally obtained a high throughput telescope design with an F-number of 6, a FOV of 60 ??*1.5 ??, and a long focal length of 876mm. In addition, the tolerance analysis is also conducted to demonstrate the instrumentation feasibility. We believe that this kind of large rectangle FOV telescope with high resolution has broad future applications in the optical remote sensing field.

This paper presents the design of a new dual-polarised Vivaldi feed for the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) radio-telescope. This wideband feed has been developed to replace the Phase I dipole feed, and is used to illuminate a 14-m diameter dish. It aims to improve the science capabilities of HERA, by allowing it to characterise the redshifted 21-cm hydrogen signal from the Cosmic Dawn as well as from the Epoch of Reionization. This is achieved by increasing the bandwidth from 100 -- 200 MHz to 50 -- 250 MHz, optimising the time response of the antenna - receiver system, and improving its sensitivity. This new Vivaldi feed is directly fed by a differential front-end module placed inside the circular cavity and connected to the back-end via cables which pass in the middle of the tapered slot. We show that this particular configuration has minimal effects on the radiation pattern and on the system response.

This paper concerns a new optimization problem arising in the management of a multi-object spectrometer with a configurable slit unit. The field of view of the spectrograph is divided into contiguous and parallel spatial bands, each one associated with two opposite sliding metal bars that can be positioned to observe one astronomical object. Thus several objects can be analyzed simultaneously within a configuration of the bars called a mask. Due to the high demand from astronomers, pointing the spectrograph's field of view to the sky, rotating it, and selecting the objects to conform a mask is a crucial optimization problem for the efficient use of the spectrometer. The paper describes this problem, presents a Mixed Integer Linear Programming formulation for the case where the rotation angle is fixed, presents a non-convex formulation for the case where the rotation angle is unfixed, describes a heuristic approach for the general problem, and discusses computational results on real-world and randomly-generated instances.