7–11 Jul 2025
Teaching and Learning Centre (TLC)
Europe/London timezone

SPT-SLIM: First light and spectral calibration

8 Jul 2025, 15:30
15m
TLC117

TLC117

Talk Blue sky to night sky: development of astronomical instrumentation Blue sky to night sky: development of astronomical instrumentation

Speaker

Dr Chris Benson (Cardiff University)

Description

The South Pole Telescope Shirokoff Line Intensity Mapper (SPT-SLIM) experiment is a pathfinder for demonstrating the use of multipixel on-chip spectrometers for millimeter (mm) Line Intensity Mapping (LIM). SPT-SLIM targets the CO rotational transitions from galaxies with redshifts ranging $z\sim0.5$--$3$ to map the large-scale structure of the Universe through hyperspectral imaging. SPT-SLIM achieved first light during the austral summer 2024-2025 observing season, leveraging superconducting filterbanks to provide $R\sim100$ imaging spectroscopy in the 120--180 GHz atmospheric window. Each of the five operational spectrometer devices couples light from an on-sky antenna to a series of 130 spectral filters, each terminated in a lumped-element kinetic inductance detector (KID).
We present early observations demonstrating the instrument and a comprehensive set of spectral calibration measurements of the SLIM submodules. Leveraging laboratory measurements with Fourier transform spectrometers, we have measured the spectral response and mm performance of the spectrometer pixels.

Author

Dr Chris Benson (Cardiff University)

Co-authors

Kyra Fichman (University of Chicago) Dr Peter Barry (Cardiff University) SPT-SLIM Collaboration

Presentation materials