Cosmology from BOLOCAM Observations of Arcminute-Scale Anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background

California Institute Of Technology, Pasadena CA

Investigators

Abstract

AST-0098737 Lange, A.E. This program will use BOLOCAM, a high-throughput, multi-wavelength, mm-wave camera designed for operation at 1.1 mm, 1.4 mm, and 2.1 mm, to image the arcminute-scale anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) over significant areas of the sky. Using BOLOCAM at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO), it will be possible to survey 1 square degree of sky. Such a survey would detect > 100 clusters of galaxies via the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (SZE). In addition, it would measure the power spectrum of secondary CMB anisotropy (due to fluctuations in the thermal SZE associated with large-scale structure along the line of sight) at multipole moments of 4000 to 8000 (angular scales of 1.5 to 3 arcminutes). The utility of these observations will be maximized by choosing the target fields to coincide with those targeted by the SIRTF MIPS team for their deep guaranteed-time observations. In addition to being relatively free of galactic foregrounds and having deep infrared coverage from the MIPS and IRAC on SIRTF, these fields include some of the deepest integrations expected from the EPIC instrument on the XMM X-ray satellite. ***