The NIKA2 instrument at 30-m IRAM telescope: performance and results

TL;DR

The NIKA2 instrument at the IRAM 30-m telescope is a dual-band millimetre camera with KID arrays, capable of high-sensitivity observations of the sky's intensity and polarisation at 150 and 260 GHz, supporting various astrophysical studies.

Contribution

This paper reports the successful installation, commissioning, and performance evaluation of the NIKA2 millimetre camera, a new dual-band KID array instrument for the IRAM 30-m telescope.

Findings

NIKA2 operates effectively at 150 and 260 GHz.

The instrument demonstrates high sensitivity and stability.

It enables new astrophysical observations of clusters, quasars, and star formation.

Abstract

The New IRAM KID Arrays 2 (NIKA2) consortium has just finished installing and commissioning a millimetre camera on the IRAM 30 m telescope. It is a dual-band camera operating with three frequency multiplexed kilo-pixels arrays of Lumped Element Kinetic Inductance Detectors (LEKID) cooled at 150 mK, designed to observe the intensity and polarisation of the sky at 260 and 150 GHz (1.15 and 2 mm). NIKA2 is today an IRAM resident instrument for millimetre astronomy, such as Intra Cluster Medium from intermediate to distant clusters and so for the follow-up of Planck satellite detected clusters, high redshift sources and quasars, early stages of star formation and nearby galaxies emission. We present an overview of the instrument performance as it has been evaluated at the end of the commissioning phase.