# Performance and on-sky optical characterization of the SPTpol instrument

Source: [Performance and on-sky optical characterization of the SPTpol instrument](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa2bad1e209131ce84920c>)

Collection index: [llms.txt](<https://www.sota2.com/research/llms.txt>)

Data updated: 2025-10-24T14:21:49.091Z

Authors: E.M. George, P. Ade, K.A. Aird, J.E. Austermann, J.A. Beall, D. Becker, A. Bender, B.A. Benson, L.E. Bleem, J. Britton, J.E. Carlstrom, C.L. Chang, H.C. Chiang, H-M. Cho, T.M. Crawford, A.T. Crites, A. Datesman, T. de Haan, M.A. Dobbs, W. Everett, A. Ewall-Wice, N.W. Halverson, N. Harrington, J.W. Henning, G.C. Hilton, W.L. Holzapfel, S. Hoover, N. Huang, J. Hubmayr, K.D. Irwin, M. Karfunkle, R. Keisler, J. Kennedy, A.T. Lee, E. Leitch, D. Li, M. Lueker, D.P. Marrone, J.J. McMahon, J. Mehl, S.S. Meyer, J. Montgomery, T.E. Montroy, J. Nagy, T. Natoli, J.P. Nibarger, M.D. Niemack, V. Novosad, S. Padin, C. Pryke, C.L. Reichardt, J.E. Ruhl, B.R. Saliwanchik, J.T. Sayre, K.K. Schaffer, E. Shirokoff, K. Story, C. Tucker, K. Vanderlinde, J.D. Vieira, G. Wang, R. Williamson, V. Yefremenko, K.W. Yoon, E. Young

Published: 2012-10-17T21:50:29.000Z

## Abstract

In January 2012, the 10m South Pole Telescope (SPT) was equipped with a polarization-sensitive camera, SPTpol, in order to measure the polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Measurements of the polarization of the CMB at small angular scales (~several arcminutes) can detect the gravitational lensing of the CMB by large scale structure and constrain the sum of the neutrino masses. At large angular scales (~few degrees) CMB measurements can constrain the energy scale of Inflation. SPTpol is a two-color mm-wave camera that consists of 180 polarimeters at 90 GHz and 588 polarimeters at 150 GHz, with each polarimeter consisting of a dual transition edge sensor (TES) bolometers. The full complement of 150 GHz detectors consists of 7 arrays of 84 ortho-mode transducers (OMTs) that are stripline coupled to two TES detectors per OMT, developed by the TRUCE collaboration and fabricated at NIST. Each 90 GHz pixel consists of two antenna-coupled absorbers coupled to two TES detectors, developed with Argonne National Labs. The 1536 total detectors are read out with digital frequency-domain multiplexing (DfMUX). The SPTpol deployment represents the first on-sky tests of both of these detector technologies, and is one of the first deployed instruments using DfMUX readout technology. We present the details of the design, commissioning, deployment, on-sky optical characterization and detector performance of the complete SPTpol focal plane.

## Recorded benchmark results

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## Original sources and implementation

[Original paper](<https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.4971>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/1210.4971.pdf>)