Previous | Session 41 | Next | Author Index | Block Schedule
A. C. Taylor (University of Oxford), CBI Collaboration
The Cosmic Background Imager (CBI) is an interferometer primarily designed to image primordial temperature and polarization anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on small angular scales in the frequency range 26-36 GHz. It has also been used to observe the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (SZ) effect in galaxy clusters, and we will present recent SZ observations with the CBI. In 2006 we plan to upgrade the CBI by increasing the antenna size from 0.9 to 1.4m. As well as increasing the sensitivity to CMB fluctuations on small angular scales (l > 900), this upgrade will make the CBI much more suited to SZ observations, by both increasing the flux sensitivity and reducing the relative contamination from primordial CMB anisotropies. We will present plans to make deep SZ measurements of an X-ray flux-limited sample of clusters for which deep XMM data are also being obtained. This well-defined sample will be used to study the relationship between measured SZ fluxes and X-ray-determined masses and temperatures, and hence help to calibrate the cluster properties that will be measured by upcoming SZ surveys.
This work is supported by the NSF, Barbara and Stanley Rawn, Jr., Rochus Vogt, Oxford University and the Royal Society.
Previous | Session 41 | Next
Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #4
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.