SPT-3G: a next-generation cosmic microwave background polarization experiment on the South Pole telescope

Abstract

© 2014 SPIE. We describe the design of a new polarization sensitive receiver, spt-3g, for the 10-meter South Pole Telescope (spt). The spt-3g receiver will deliver a factor of ∼20 improvement in mapping speed over the current receiver, spt-pol. The sensitivity of the spt-3g receiver will enable the advance from statistical detection of B-mode polarization anisotropy power to high signal-to-noise measurements of the individual modes, i.e., maps. This will lead to precise (∼0.06 eV) constraints on the sum of neutrino masses with the potential to directly address the neutrino mass hierarchy. It will allow a separation of the lensing and inflationary B-mode power spectra, improving constraints on the amplitude and shape of the primordial signal, either through spt-3g data alone or in combination with bicep2/keck, which is observing the same area of sky. The measurement of small-scale temperature anisotropy will provide new constraints on the epoch of reionization. Additional science from the spt-3g survey will be significantly enhanced by the synergy with the ongoing optical Dark Energy Survey (des), including: a 1% constraint on the bias of optical tracers of large-scale structure, a measurement of the differential Doppler signal from pairs of galaxy clusters that will test General Relativity on ∼200Mpc scales, and improved cosmological constraints from the abundance of clusters of galaxies.