Designs for a large-aperture telescope to map the CMB 10X faster

TL;DR

This paper proposes innovative crossed Dragone telescope and receiver designs that significantly increase the field-of-view and mapping speed of future large-aperture CMB telescopes, enabling more efficient detection of cosmic signals.

Contribution

Introduction of new crossed Dragone telescope and receiver optics designs that enhance the diffraction-limited field-of-view and mapping speed for next-generation CMB observations.

Findings

Designs increase usable field-of-view by an order of magnitude.

Preliminary models show high efficiency illumination of over 10^5 detectors.

Enhanced mapping speed facilitates more precise cosmological measurements.

Abstract

Current large-aperture cosmic microwave background (CMB) telescopes have nearly maximized the number of detectors that can be illuminated while maintaining diffraction-limited image quality. The polarization-sensitive detector arrays being deployed in these telescopes in the next few years will have roughly $10^4$ detectors. Increasing the mapping speed of future instruments by at least an order of magnitude is important to enable precise probes of the inflationary paradigm in the first fraction of a second after the big bang and provide strong constraints on cosmological parameters. The CMB community has begun planning a next generation "Stage IV" CMB project that will be comprised of multiple telescopes with between $10^5$ - $10^6$ detectors to pursue these goals. This paper introduces new crossed Dragone telescope and receiver optics designs that increase the usable diffraction-limited field-of-view, and therefore the mapping speed, by an order of magnitude compared to the upcoming generation of large-aperture instruments. Polarization systematics and engineering considerations are presented, including a preliminary receiver model to demonstrate that these designs will enable high efficiency illumination of $>10^5$ detectors in a next generation CMB telescope.