Collaborative Research: Development of an enhanced CARMA for high-fidelity astronomical imaging from cm to mm wavelengths

毫米波天文研究组合阵列(CARMA)是一个由23个射电望远镜组成的阵列，位于加利福尼亚州因约山的雪松平原。该阵列是异质的，包括加州理工大学的6台10米望远镜，伯克利-伊利诺伊-马里兰协会的9台6米望远镜，以及芝加哥大学的8台3.5米望远镜。目前，并不是所有的望远镜都有能力同时在相同的波长或频率上进行观测。能够为所有望远镜配备能够在同一时间进行带通观测的接收器的目标将很快实现。加州理工学院的John Carpenter博士和芝加哥大学的John Carlstrom博士将合作开发数字相关器和接收器，以将CARMA望远镜完全集成到一个单一阵列中，该阵列可以在CARMA接收器的全部8 GHz IF带宽上同时交叉关联来自所有23个天线的信号。这将提供显著增强的观测能力，并将使宇宙学(特别是研究星系团和Sunyaev-Zel‘dovich效应)和恒星形成(通过研究恒星形成区分子气体的化学和运动学)方面的新发现成为可能。这项工作是由NSF的主要研究仪器项目通过天文科学部资助的。

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.