The Simons Observatory: galactic science goals and forecasts

Hensley, Brandon S., Clark, Susan E., Fanfani, Valentina, Krachmalnicoff, Nicoletta, Fabbian, Giulio ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3255-4695, Poletti, Davide, Puglisi, Giuseppe, Coppi, Gabriele, Nibauer, Jacob, Gerasimov, Roman, Galitzki, Nicholas, Choi, Steve K., Ashton, Peter C., Baccigalupi, Carlo, Baxter, Eric, Burkhart, Blakesley, Calabrese, Erminia ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0837-0068, Chluba, Jens, Errard, Josquin, Frolov, Andrei V., Hervías-Caimapo, Carlos, Huffenberger, Kevin M., Johnson, Bradley R., Jost, Baptiste, Keating, Brian, McCarrick, Heather, Nati, Federico, Sathyanarayana Rao, Mayuri, van Engelen, Alexander, Walker, Samantha, Wolz, Kevin, Xu, Zhilei, Zhu, Ningfeng and Zonca, Andrea 2022. The Simons Observatory: galactic science goals and forecasts. Astrophysical Journal 929 (2) , 166. 10.3847/1538-4357/ac5e36

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Abstract

Observing in six frequency bands from 27 to 280 GHz over a large sky area, the Simons Observatory (SO) is poised to address many questions in Galactic astrophysics in addition to its principal cosmological goals. In this work, we provide quantitative forecasts on astrophysical parameters of interest for a range of Galactic science cases. We find that SO can: constrain the frequency spectrum of polarized dust emission at a level of Δβd ≲ 0.01 and thus test models of dust composition that predict that βd in polarization differs from that measured in total intensity; measure the correlation coefficient between polarized dust and synchrotron emission with a factor of two greater precision than current constraints; exclude the nonexistence of exo-Oort clouds at roughly 2.9σ if the true fraction is similar to the detection rate of giant planets; map more than 850 molecular clouds with at least 50 independent polarization measurements at 1 pc resolution; detect or place upper limits on the polarization fractions of CO(2–1) emission and anomalous microwave emission at the 0.1% level in select regions; and measure the correlation coefficient between optical starlight polarization and microwave polarized dust emission in 1° patches for all lines of sight with NH ≳ 2 × 1020 cm−2. The goals and forecasts outlined here provide a roadmap for other microwave polarization experiments to expand their scientific scope via Milky Way astrophysics.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Physics and Astronomy
Additional Information:	Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.
Publisher:	American Astronomical Society
ISSN:	0004-637X
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	6 June 2022
Date of Acceptance:	14 March 2022
Last Modified:	15 May 2023 20:27
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/150230

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