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.
Frequency |
Wavelength |
Receiver Noise |
Transmission | System Noise |
Continuum NEFD |
Spectral NEFD |
Spectral NEFD |
90 | 3.333 | 45 | 0.97 | 91 | 33.1 | 5411.2 | 0.166 |
150 | 2.000 | 51 | 0.98 | 96 | 35.1 | 4444.5 | 0.136 |
230 | 1.304 | 40 | 0.97 | 86 | 31.6 | 3226.0 | 0.098 |
300 | 1.000 | 50 | 0.94 | 113 | 42.0 | 3756.4 | 0.113 |
350 | 0.857 | 60 | 0.92 | 138 | 51.6 | 4274.3 | 0.127 |
420 | 0.714 | 90 | 0.84 | 229 | 87.2 | 6594.3 | 0.194 |
650 | 0.462 | 110 | 0.65 | 450 | 182.1 | 11062.7 | 0.306 |
850 | 0.353 | 160 | 0.58 | 724 | 316.2 | 16801.2 | 0.430 |
1050 | 0.286 | 525 | 0.16 | 7798 | 3748.2 | 179199.0 | 4.17 |
1300 | 0.231 | 650 | 0.16 | 10659 | 5942.8 | 255344.1 | 5.12 |
1500 | 0.200 | 750 | 0.15 | 14711 | 9448.9 | 377955.2 | 6.58 |