Modeling the quasi-optical performance of CMB astronomical interferometers

摘要

The Millimeter-Wave Bolometric Interferometer (MBI) is a ground-based instrument designed to measure thepolarization anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and contains a number of quasi-opticalcomponents, including a complex back-to-back system of corrugated feed-horn antennas. In this paper we use MBI asan example to demonstrate the existing modeling techniques and as a focus to develop extended modeling capabilities.The software we use to model this system targets the millimeter and sub-millimeter region of the electromagneticspectrum and has been extended to efficiently model the performance of back-to-back corrugated horns embedded inlarger optical systems. This allows the calculation of the coupling of radiation from the sky to the detector array througha back-to-back horn feed system.