Orateur
Description
The leading theory to understand the initial conditions of the Big Bang is inflation, which predicts the existence of a primordial background of gravitational waves that must have left its imprint in the CMB polarization: the so-called B-modes. The main difficulty in measuring the B-mode polarization comes not just from its sheer faintness, but from the fact that many other objects in the Universe also emit polarized microwaves, which mask the faint CMB signal.
The European Low Frequency Survey (ELFS) is a project that will enable the detection of primordial B-mode polarization by measuring the Galactic and extra-Galactic foregrounds in the 5 - 120 GHz frequency window.
The first stage of this project will be carried out in synergy with the Simons Array (SA) collaboration, installing a 5.5-11 GHz coherent receiver at the focus of one of the three 3.5 m SA telescopes in Atacama, Chile (“ELFS on SA”).
The receiver will be equipped with a fully digital back-end based on the latest Xilinx RF System-on-Chip devices that will provide frequency resolution of 1MHz across the whole observing band, allowing us to clean the scientific signal from unwanted radio frequency interference, particularly from low-earth orbit satellite mega-constellations.
In this talk we will review the scientific motivation for ELFS and its instrumental characteristics, and we will provide an update on the development of ELFS on SA.
