Optical Design of PICO, a Concept for a Space Mission to Probe Inflation and Cosmic Origins

TL;DR

PICO is a proposed NASA space mission designed to make highly sensitive, full-sky measurements of the cosmic microwave background across multiple frequencies, aiming to probe fundamental physics of the early universe, inflation, and cosmic structure formation.

Contribution

This paper presents the optical design and technological innovations of PICO, including its open-Dragone optical system and broad frequency coverage, as a novel approach for CMB observations.

Findings

Optical system uses a two-reflector open-Dragone design.

PICO hosts nearly 13,000 transition edge sensor bolometers across 21 bands.

Estimated polarization sensitivity of 0.65 microK(CMB)-arcmin over the entire sky.

Abstract

The Probe of Inflation and Cosmic Origins (PICO) is a probe-class mission concept currently under study by NASA. PICO will probe the physics of the Big Bang and the energy scale of inflation, constrain the sum of neutrino masses, measure the growth of structures in the universe, and constrain its reionization history by making full sky maps of the cosmic microwave background with sensitivity 80 times higher than the Planck space mission. With bands at 21-799 GHz and arcmin resolution at the highest frequencies, PICO will make polarization maps of Galactic synchrotron and dust emission to observe the role of magnetic fields in Milky Way's evolution and star formation. We discuss PICO's optical system, focal plane, and give current best case noise estimates. The optical design is a two-reflector optimized open-Dragone design with a cold aperture stop. It gives a diffraction limited field of view (DLFOV) with throughput of 910 square cm sr at 21 GHz. The large 82 square degree DLFOV hosts 12,996 transition edge sensor bolometers distributed in 21 frequency bands and maintained at 0.1 K. We use focal plane technologies that are currently implemented on operating CMB instruments including three-color multi-chroic pixels and multiplexed readouts. To our knowledge, this is the first use of an open-Dragone design for mm-wave astrophysical observations, and the only monolithic CMB instrument to have such a broad frequency coverage. With current best case estimate polarization depth of 0.65 microK(CMB}-arcmin over the entire sky, PICO is the most sensitive CMB instrument designed to date.