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Villalba Gonzalez, Pedro

University of British Columbia

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) has proven to be a scientific gold mine in the field of cosmology over the past 50 years. It’s blackbody spectrum and anisotropy measurements have enabled the determination of the main cosmological parameters under the Λ-Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM) model. In the recent years, scientists have switched their interest towards the study of the CMB polarization field. The inflationary model, which aims to explain the very early universe predicts a period of exponential expansion when the universe was only 10ˉ³⁴ seconds old. This rapid expansion is theorized to have produced primordial gravitational waves (PGW) that could have survived long enough to leave an imprint in the polarization field of the CMB, in the form of B−modes. Among the several challenges in the search for this cosmological signal, the presence of foregrounds between us and the CMB is one of the most difficult to overcome. The synchrotron radiation from our galaxy dominates over the faint polarized emission from the CMB in its observing frequency, ∼ 100 GHz. The Canadian Galactic Emission Mapper (CGEM) is a planned four metre, single dish radio telescope that will map the Northern sky in polarization in the 8-10 GHz range. By measuring in this frequency window, it will produce the most precise large-area polarization maps ever made in a window where the galactic signal is ∼ 10³ times higher than in the CMB frequency range. These maps will be subsequently used by B−modes search experiments to improve their foreground models. CGEM will be extremely relevant for CMB polarization science. A secondary goal is a better understanding of the interstellar medium in our galaxy. This thesis describes my contributions to making CGEM happen. We present a simulation pipeline developed and tested to inform the design of the telescope and to simulate time ordered data. We also show part of the design, development and testing of the radiometer that will go into CGEM.

Text

2023-08-30

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/85702

Physics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/