CONCERTO at APEX: installation and technical commissioning

TL;DR

CONCERTO is a large-field spectral-imaging instrument operating at 130-310GHz, installed on the APEX telescope, with innovative detector arrays and a fast Fourier Transform Spectrometer, enabling high-speed spectral data collection.

Contribution

This paper details the deployment, installation, and initial testing of CONCERTO, a novel spectral-imaging instrument with advanced detector arrays and spectrometer technology.

Findings

Successfully installed and commissioned CONCERTO on APEX

First sky observations demonstrate instrument capabilities

Achieved spectral data collection at 2.5Hz with high pixel count

Abstract

We describe the deployment and first tests on Sky of CONCERTO, a large field-of-view (18.6arc-min) spectral-imaging instrument. The instrument operates in the range 130-310GHz from the APEX 12-meters telescope located at 5100m a.s.l. on the Chajnantor plateau. Spectra with R=1-300 are obtained using a fast (2.5Hz mechanical frequency) Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS), coupled to a continuous dilution cryostat with a base temperature of 60mK. Two 2152-pixels arrays of Lumped Element Kinetic Inductance Detectors (LEKID) are installed in the cryostat that also contains the cold optics and the front-end electronics. CONCERTO, installed in April 2021, generates more than 20k spectra per second during observations. We describe the final development phases, the installation and the first results obtained on Sky.