South Pole Telescope Operations and Data Products

该奖项旨在支持南极望远镜（SPT）对140亿年宇宙微波背景（CMB）光的测量，以解决宇宙学中一些最基本和最引人注目的问题：宇宙的起源是什么？宇宙是由什么构成的？中微子的质量尺度是多少？第一批恒星和星系是什么时候形成的？宇宙是如何再电离的？加速宇宙膨胀的暗能量是什么？防范酷刑小组委员会在探讨这些问题方面发挥着独特的作用。它的位置对于毫米和亚毫米无线电波长的天空超低噪声成像调查是理想的。SPT由美国国家科学基金会的阿蒙森-斯科特南极站提供支持，阿蒙森-斯科特南极站是地球上进行毫米波天空调查的最佳操作地点。这个独特的地理位置使SPT能够获得极其敏感的全天候观测目标低银河系前景区域的天空。该望远镜的第三代，SPT-3G接收器有16000个探测器，配置用于三个毫米波波段的偏振敏感观测。拟议的操作包括5年的天空调查，以获得1500平方度领域的超深测量，并从调查中产生和公开存档重要数据产品。该望远镜的CMB温度和极化功率谱将在探测来自不同数据集的宇宙学参数估计之间当前紧张关系的本质以及确定它们的解释是否需要超越当前LCDM模型的物理学方面发挥核心作用。这些数据将有助于限制暗能量的特性，暗能量通过CMB透镜效应和星系团的丰度影响大型结构的生长。提议的操作还支持SPT在事件视界望远镜（EHT）中的关键作用，EHT是一个全球阵列的望远镜，用于成像银河系中心黑洞周围的事件视界。该奖项旨在解决并推进美国国家科学基金会“宇宙之窗：多信使天体物理学时代”项目的科学目标。拟议的研究活动还将通过将研究生和本科教育与技术发展、天文观测和SPT数据的科学分析结合起来，有助于培养下一代科学家。通过将研究活动引入本科课堂，并与非科学家分享前沿研究，将研究与教育结合起来，通过完善的教育网络将其扩展到大学之外，在教育连续体的各个层次上获得广泛的受众。通过与博物馆的合作和新媒体，防范酷刑小组的推广和教育工作在个性化体验的同时影响了大量的个人。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is to support measurements of the 14-billion-year cosmic microwave background (CMB) light with the South Pole Telescope (SPT) to address some of the most basic and compelling questions in cosmology: What is the origin of the Universe? What is the Universe made of? What is the mass scale of the neutrinos? When did the first stars and galaxies form and how was the Universe reionized? What is the Dark Energy that is accelerating the expansion of the Universe? The SPT plays a unique role in the pursuit of these questions. Its siting is ideal for ultra-low-noise imaging surveys of the sky at the millimeter and sub-millimeter radio wavelengths. The SPT is supported by the NSF's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, which is the best operational site on Earth for mm-wave sky surveys. This unique geographical location allows SPT to obtain extremely sensitive 24/7 observations of targeted low Galactic foreground regions of the sky.The telescope's third-generation, SPT-3G receiver has 16,000 detectors configured for polarization-sensitive observations in three millimeter-wave bands. The proposed operation includes five years of sky surveys to obtain ultra-deep measurements of a 1500 square degree field and to produce and publicly archive essential data products from the survey. The telescope's CMB temperatures and polarization power spectrum will play a central role in probing the nature of current tensions among cosmological parameter estimations from different data sets and determining if their explanation requires physics beyond the current LCDM model. The data will help constraining the Dark Energy properties that affect the growth of large structures through both the CMB lensing and abundance of galaxy clusters. The proposed operations also support SPT's critical role in the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a global array of telescopes to image the event horizon around the black hole at the center of Milky Way Galaxy. This award addresses and advances the science objectives and goals of the NSF's "Windows on the Universe: The Era of Multi-Messenger Astrophysics" program.The proposed research activity will also contribute to the training of the next generation of scientists by integrating graduate and undergraduate education with the technology development, astronomical observations, and scientific analyses of SPT data. Research and education are integrated by bringing research activities into the undergraduate classroom and sharing of forefront research with non-scientists extending it beyond the university through a well-established educational network that reaches a wide audience at all levels of the educational continuum. Through museum partnerships and new media, the SPT outreach and educational efforts reach large numbers of individuals while personalizing the experience.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.