Computer simulations of modern cosmic microwave background experiments, and an application to the Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor.
Loading...
Files
Date
2019
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The study of the Cosmic Microwave Background is one of the corner-stones in the
understanding of our universe. In recent years, ground and space born telescope have
evidence that the observable universe is well described by a relatively simple model,
the ΛCDM model. Ongoing and future experiments aim at going even further than
ΛCDM by probing the very first moments of our universe using CMB polarization.
Within this polarization field lies a possible signature of inflation, the leading theory
that explains why do we observe a flat, isotropic and homogeneous universe. This
signal corresponds to primordial B-modes, and its faintness makes its detection a
major technical challenge. In this work, we present computer simulations of the
CLASS Q-band telescope, one of the four telescopes of the CLASS experiment aiming
at characterizing, among other things, primordial B-modes and thus inflation.
This work is divided in several chapters. The first two briefly introduce the reader
to the general concepts of cosmology and the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).
The third chapter describes the method used to model the polarizing properties of
antennas. Chapter four presents the algorithm and prototype implementation of a
new computer simulation code for CMB, which was used to build simulations of
the CLASS experiment. Chapter five generally describes the CLASS telescope, and
presents the methodology and results from electromagnetic simulations. This work
finalizes by presenting the results of an application of the simulation code to CLASS
using realistic parameters for its scanning strategy, beams and sky models.
Description
Tesis (Doctor en Astrofísica)--Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2019