Development of Calibration Strategies for the Simons Observatory

TL;DR

This paper discusses calibration strategies for the Simons Observatory's instruments, focusing on spectral response, gain stability, and polarization angle calibration to achieve high sensitivity for cosmological measurements.

Contribution

It introduces specific calibration requirements and experimental techniques tailored for the Simons Observatory to meet its scientific goals.

Findings

Calibration techniques meet the required sensitivity thresholds.

Spectral response calibration improves measurement accuracy.

Polarization angle calibration reduces systematic errors.

Abstract

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.