Collaborative Research: Development of an Enhanced CARMA for High-Fidelity Astronomical Imaging from cm to mm Wavelengths

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The Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA) is an array of 23 radio telescopes located at Cedar Flat, in the Inyo Mountains of California. The array is heterogeneous, consisting of six 10-m telescopes belonging to Caltech, nine 6-m telescopes from the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association, and eight 3.5-m telescopes of The University of Chicago. Not all telescopes currently have the capability to observe at the same wavelength or frequency bandpasses simultaneously. The goal of being able to outfit all telescopes with receivers capable of observing at the same bandpass at the same time will soon be realized. A collaboration between Dr. John Carpenter of the California Institute of Technology and Dr. John Carlstrom of The University of Chicago will develop the digital correlators and receivers to fully integrate the CARMA telescopes into a single array that cross-correlates the signals from all 23 antennas simultaneously over the full 8 GHz IF bandwidth of the CARMA receivers. This will provide significantly enhanced observing capability and will enable new discoveries in cosmology (especially the study of galaxy clusters and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect) and star formation (through the study of the chemistry and kinematics of molecular gas in star-forming regions). This work is being funded by NSF's Major Research Instrumentation program though the Division of Astronomical Sciences.