The Simons Observatory (SO) is a new cosmic microwave background experiment being built on Cerro Toco in Chile, due to begin observations in the early 2020s. We describe the scientific goals of the experiment, motivate the design, and forecast its performance. SO will measure the temperature and polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background in six frequency bands centered at: 27, 39, 93, 145, 225 and 280 GHz. The initial configuration of SO will have three small-aperture 0.5-m telescopes and one large-aperture 6-m telescope, with a total of 60,000 cryogenic bolometers. Our key science goals are to characterize the primordial perturbations, measure the number of relativistic species and the mass of neutrinos, test for deviations from a cosmological constant, improve our understanding of galaxy evolution, and constrain the duration of reionization. The small aperture telescopes will target the largest angular scales observable from Chile, mapping ≈ 10% of the sky to a white noise level of 2 µK-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, to measure the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio, r, at a target level of σ(r) = 0.003. The large aperture telescope will map ≈ 40% of the sky at arcminute angular resolution to an expected white noise level of 6 µK-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, overlapping with the majority of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope sky region and partially with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. With up to an order of magnitude lower polarization noise than maps from the Planck satellite, the high-resolution sky maps will constrain cosmological parameters derived from the damping tail, gravitational lensing of the microwave background, the primordial bispectrum, and the thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects, and will aid in delensing the large-angle polarization signal to measure the tensorto-scalar ratio. The survey will also provide a legacy catalog of 16,000 galaxy clusters and more than 20,000 extragalactic sources a .

We present new arcminute-resolution maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature and polarization anisotropy from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, using data taken from 2013–2016 at 98 and 150 GHz. The maps cover more than 17,000 deg2, the deepest 600 deg2 with noise levels below 10μK-arcmin. We use the power spectrum derived from almost 6,000 deg2 of these maps to constrain cosmology. The ACT data enable a measurement of the angular scale of features in both the divergence-like polarization and the temperature anisotropy, tracing both the velocity and density at last-scattering. From these one can derive the distance to the last-scattering surface and thus infer the local expansion rate, H 0. By combining ACT data with large-scale information from WMAP we measure H 0=67.6± 1.1 km/s/Mpc, at 68% confidence, in excellent agreement with the independently-measured Planck satellite estimate (from ACT alone we find H 0=67.9± 1.5 km/s/Mpc). The ΛCDM model provides a good fit to the ACT data, and we find no evidence for deviations: both the spatial curvature, and the departure from the standard lensing signal in the spectrum, are zero to within 1σ; the number of relativistic species, the primordial Helium fraction, and the running of the spectral index are consistent with ΛCDM predictions to within 1.5–2.2σ. We compare ACT, WMAP, and Planck at the parameter level and find good consistency; we investigate how the constraints on the correlated spectral index and baryon density parameters readjust when adding CMB large-scale information that ACT does not measure. The DR4 products presented here will be publicly released on the NASA Legacy Archive for Microwave Background Data Analysis.

We use the Ly-α forest power spectrum measured by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and high-resolution spectroscopy observations in combination with cosmic microwave background and galaxy clustering constraints to place limits on a sterile neutrino as a dark matter candidate in the warm dark matter (WDM) scenario. Such a neutrino would be created in the early universe through mixing with an active neutrino and would suppress structure on scales smaller than its free streaming scale. We ran a series of high-resolution hydrodynamic simulations with varying neutrino mass to describe the effect of a sterile neutrino on the Ly-α forest power spectrum. We find that the mass limit is ms > 14keV at 95% c.l. (10keV at 99.9%), which is nearly an order of magnitude tighter constraint than previously published limits and is above the upper limit allowed by X-ray constraints, excluding this candidate as dark matter in this model. The corresponding limit for a neutrino that decoupled early while in thermal equilibrium is 2.5keV (95 % c.l.). One of the major unsolved mysteries in cosmology is the nature of the dark matter in the universe. Observational evidence points towards cold dark matter (CDM), for which random velocities are negligible. Two of the leading particle physics candidates, the lightest supersymmetric partner and axions, both require extensions beyond the standard model. At the same time, neutrino experiments over the past decade have shown that neutrinos oscillate from one flavor to another, which is only possible if they have mass. Current data from atmospheric and solar neutrino experiments [1,2] are compatible with mixing between the three active neutrino families. Perhaps the simplest way to incorporate these neutrino phenomena into the standard model is to add right-handed neutrinos, just as for other fermions.Given this extension of the standard model it is natural to ask if these (almost) sterile right-handed neutrinos can also explain the dark matter [3]. At least two sterile neutrinos are required to explain the origin of neutrino mass and existence of different mass mixing scales in solar and atmospheric neutrinos, so in a model with three families of sterile neutrinos a third one can act as dark matter [4]. Such neutrinos free stream and erase all fluctuations on scales smaller than the free streaming length. This length is roughly proportional to the temperature and inversely proportional to the mass of neutrinos. Thus if the neutrino mass is sufficiently high, or the temperature sufficiently low, then it acts just like CDM and can satisfy all of the observational constraints from structure formation. Current constraints require the neutrino mass to be above 1.8keV [5,6]. This is below the 5-8keV upper limits from the absence of detection of X-ray photons from radiative decays [7,8,9,10]. A massive neutrino in the keV range has also been suggested as a possible explanation for high pulsar velocities [11] and such a model can possibly explain baryon asymmetry in the universe [12].A sterile neutri...

We present cosmological parameters derived from the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation observed at 148 GHz and 218 GHz over 296 deg 2 with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) during its 2008 season. ACT measures fluctuations at scales 500 < < 10,000. We fit a model for the lensed CMB, Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ), and foreground contribution to the 148 GHz and 218 GHz power spectra, including thermal and kinetic SZ, Poisson power from radio and infrared point sources, and clustered power from infrared point sources. At = 3000, about half the power at 148 GHz comes from primary CMB after masking bright radio sources. The power from thermal and kinetic SZ is estimated to be B 3000 = 6.8 ± 2.9 μK 2 , where B ≡ ( + 1)C /2π . The IR Poisson power at 148 GHz is B 3000 = 7.8 ± 0.7 μK 2 (C = 5.5 ± 0.5 nK 2 ), and a clustered IR component is required with B 3000 = 4.6 ± 0.9 μK 2 , assuming an analytic model for its power spectrum shape. At 218 GHz only about 15% of the power, approximately 27 μK 2 , is CMB anisotropy at = 3000. The remaining 85% is attributed to IR sources (approximately 50% Poisson and 35% clustered), with spectral index α = 3.69 ± 0.14 for flux scaling as S(ν) ∝ ν α . We estimate primary cosmological parameters from the less contaminated 148 GHz spectrum, marginalizing over SZ and source power. The ΛCDM cosmological model is a good fit to the data (χ 2 /dof = 29/46), and ΛCDM parameters estimated from ACT+Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) are consistent with the seven-year WMAP limits, with scale invariant n s = 1 excluded at 99.7% confidence level (CL) (3σ ). A model with no CMB lensing is disfavored at 2.8σ . By measuring the third to seventh acoustic peaks, and probing the Silk damping regime, the ACT data improve limits on cosmological parameters that affect the small-scale CMB power. The ACT data combined with WMAP give a 6σ detection of primordial helium, with Y P = 0.313 ± 0.044, and a 4σ detection of relativistic species, assumed to be neutrinos, with N eff = 5.3 ± 1.3 (4.6 ± 0.8 with BAO+H 0 data). From the CMB alone the running of the spectral index is constrained to be dn s /d ln k = −0.034 ± 0.018, the limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio is r < 0.25 (95% CL), and the possible contribution of Nambu cosmic strings to the power spectrum is constrained to string tension Gμ < 1.6 × 10 −7 (95% CL).

We create realistic, full-sky, half-arcminute resolution simulations of the microwave sky matched to the most recent astrophysical observations. The primary purpose of these simulations is to test the data reduction pipeline for the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) experiment; however, we have widened the frequency coverage beyond the ACT bands and utilized the easily accessible HEALPix map format to make these simulations applicable to other current and near future microwave background experiments. Some of the novel features of these simulations are that the radio and infrared galaxy populations are correlated with the galaxy cluster and group populations, the primordial microwave background is lensed by the dark matter structure in the simulation via a ray-tracing code, the contribution to the thermal and kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) signals from galaxy clusters, groups, and the intergalactic medium has been included, and the gas prescription to model the SZ signals has been refined to match the most recent X-ray observations. The cosmology adopted in these simulations is also consistent with the WMAP 5-year parameter measurements. From these simulations we find a slope for the Y 200 − M 200 relation that is only slightly steeper than self-similar, with an intrinsic scatter in the relation of ∼ 14%. Regarding the contamination of cluster SZ flux by radio galaxies, we find for 148 GHz (90 GHz) only 3% (4%) of halos have their SZ decrements contaminated at a level of 20% or more. We find the contamination levels higher for infrared galaxies. However, at 90 GHz, less than 20% of clusters with M 200 > 2.5 × 10 14 M ⊙ and z < 1.2 have their SZ decrements filled in at a level of 20% or more. At 148 GHz, less than 20% of clusters with M 200 > 2.5 × 10 14 M ⊙ and z < 0.8 have their SZ decrements filled in at a level of 50% or larger. Our models also suggest that a population of very high flux infrared galaxies, which are likely lensed sources, contribute most to the SZ contamination of very massive clusters at 90 and 148 GHz. These simulations are publicly available and should serve as a useful tool for microwave surveys to cross-check SZ cluster detection, power spectrum, and cross-correlation analyses.

We present a new hybrid code for large volume, high resolution simulations of cosmic reionization, which utilizes a N-body algorithm for dark matter, physically motivated prescriptions for baryons and star formation, and an adaptive ray tracing algorithm for radiative transfer of ionizing photons. Two test simulations each with 3 billion particles and 400 million rays in a 50 Mpc/h box have been run to give initial results. Halos are resolved down to virial temperatures of 10 4 K for the redshift range of interest in order to robustly model star formation and clumping factors. This is essential to correctly account for ionization and recombination processes. We find that the halos and sources are strongly biased with respect to the underlying dark matter, re-enforcing the requirement of large simulation boxes to minimize cosmic variance and to obtain a qualitatively correct picture of reionization. We model the stellar initial mass function (IMF), by following the spatially dependent gas metallicity evolution, and distinguish between the first generation, Population III (PopIII) stars and the second generation, Population II (PopII) stars. The PopIII stars with a top-heavy IMF produce an order of magnitude more ionizing photons at high redshifts z 10, resulting in a more extended reionization. In our simulations, complete overlap of HII regions occurs at z ≈ 6.5 and the computed mass and volume weighted residual HI fractions at 5 z 6.5 are both in good agreement with high redshift quasar absorption measurements from SDSS. The values for the Thomson optical depth are consistent within 1 − σ of the current best-fit value from third-year WMAP.

We present the temperature and polarization angular power spectra of the CMB measured by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) from 5400 deg2 of the 2013–2016 survey, which covers >15000 deg2 at 98 and 150 GHz. For this analysis we adopt a blinding strategy to help avoid confirmation bias and, related to this, show numerous checks for systematic error done before unblinding. Using the likelihood for the cosmological analysis we constrain secondary sources of anisotropy and foreground emission, and derive a “CMB-only” spectrum that extends to ℓ=4000. At large angular scales, foreground emission at 150 GHz is ∼1% of TT and EE within our selected regions and consistent with that found by Planck. Using the same likelihood, we obtain the cosmological parameters for ΛCDM for the ACT data alone with a prior on the optical depth of τ=0.065±0.015. ΛCDM is a good fit. The best-fit model has a reduced χ2 of 1.07 (PTE=0.07) with H 0=67.9±1.5 km/s/Mpc. We show that the lensing BB signal is consistent with ΛCDM and limit the celestial EB polarization angle to ψ P  =−0.07̂±0.09̂. We directly cross correlate ACT with Planck and observe generally good agreement but with some discrepancies in TE. All data on which this analysis is based will be publicly released.

We present a catalog of 68 galaxy clusters, of which 19 are new discoveries, detected via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZ) at 148 GHz in the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) survey on the celestial equator. With this addition, the ACT collaboration has reported a total of 91 optically confirmed, SZ detected clusters. The 504 square degree survey region includes 270 square degrees of overlap with SDSS Stripe 82, permitting the confirmation of SZ cluster candidates in deep archival optical data. The subsample of 48 clusters within Stripe 82 is estimated to be 90% complete for M 500c > 4.5 × 10 14 M ⊙ and redshifts 0.15 < z < 0.8. While a full suite of matched filters is used to detect the clusters, the sample is studied further through a "Profile Based Amplitude Analysis" using a statistic derived from a single filter at a fixed θ 500 = 5. ′ 9 angular scale. This new approach incorporates the cluster redshift along with prior information on the cluster pressure profile to fix the relationship between the cluster characteristic size (R 500 ) and the integrated Compton parameter (Y 500 ). We adopt a one-parameter family of "Universal Pressure Profiles" (UPP) with associated scaling laws, derived from X-ray measurements of nearby clusters, as a baseline model. Three additional models of cluster physics are used to investigate a range of scaling relations beyond the UPP prescription. Assuming a concordance cosmology, the UPP scalings are found to be nearly identical to an adiabatic model, while a model incorporating non-thermal pressure better matches dynamical mass measurements and masses from the South Pole Telescope. A high signal to noise ratio subsample of 15 ACT clusters with complete optical follow-up is used to obtain cosmological constraints. We demonstrate, using fixed scaling relations, how the constraints depend on the assumed gas model if only SZ measurements are used, and show that constraints from SZ data are limited by uncertainty in the scaling relation parameters rather than sample size or measurement uncertainty. We next add in seven clusters from the ACT Southern survey, including their dynamical mass measurements, which are based on galaxy velocity dispersions and thus are independent of the gas physics. In combination with WMAP7 these data simultaneously constrain the scaling relation and cosmological parameters, yielding 68% confidence ranges described by σ 8 = 0.829 ± 0.024 and Ω m = 0.292 ± 0.025. We consider these results in the context of constraints from CMB and other cluster studies. The constraints arise mainly due to the inclusion of the dynamical mass information and do not require strong priors on the SZ scaling relation parameters. The results include marginalization over a 15% bias in dynamical masses relative to the true halo mass. In an extension to ΛCDM that incorporates non-zero neutrino mass density, we combine our data with WMAP7, Baryon Acoustic Oscillation data, and Hubble constant measurements to constrain the sum of the neutrino mass species to be ν m ν < 0.29 eV (95% con...