Instrumentation

The Greenland Telescope Project aims to deploy a suite of state-of-the-art instruments on the telescope. At first light, single pixel, dual polarization sideband separating heterodyne receivers based on ALMA Band 6 and 7 receivers will be available, along with a room temperature W band receiver for holography and pointing tests on continuum and SiO maser sources, with 350 GHz multibeam and sub-mm and THz heterodyne receivers (including small arrays) planned for deployment in subsequent years. The Project is also seeking partners to develop short and long wavelength bolometer cameras for the 450µm-200µm and 1.3mm-850µm windows, and bolometric spectrometer arrays. The GLT will be able to act as a test bed for novel instruments, including those intended for CCAT.

Estimates of sensitivity for heterodyne observations using state-of-the-art single pixel receivers are given in the table below. Backend spectrometer systems for heterodyne receivers are currently being investigated, but we expect to provide both an ultra-wideband system for single-pixel observations and a narrower bandwidth multi-input system for use with multi-pixel receivers. We expect to operate instruments on a campaign basis, with major instrument reconfigurations taking place during the summer months, when access to the site is easier.

TABLE: Estimated heterodyne single-pixel sensitivities for proposed bands on the GLT, assuming tenth percentile weather at the highest frequency bands, and a 12µm RMS surface. SIS receivers are assumed for bands below 1 THz and HEB receivers for bands above 1 THz.