Latest News
Ashesh, Rustam, and Jon visited Milan to participate in the CMB-Cal conference. There we met up with a bunch of good friends as well as alumni from the group, including former PhD students, Adri, Alex, and Nadia. Rustam and Ashesh presented posters at the meeting. Rustam’s posters described his and Thomas’ work on robot-enabled holography while Ashesh presented on early results on refractor simulations with the Meep FDTD software. It was great to see so many old friends and learn about lots of cool calibration activites. Many thanks to Federico Nati, Gabriele Coppi, and all of the organizers!
We are setting up an infrastructure that enables holographic techniques at millimeter wavelengths. Thomas and Rustam made an amazing video showing some the capabilities of the system, which includes a 6-axis robot from Kuka.
The video shows that the 3-mm waves that are emitted by the system allow us to pear through plastics and reveal a 3D-printed cat in a box :)
Rustam is in the process of writing an SPIE conference proceeding summarizing this work. Stay tuned!
We are looking for new people to join our lab at the University of Iceland. We have 1 postdoc and 1 PhD student positions open. Both are 3-year positions funded by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council to work on the CMBeam project.
For information about the posistions, including info on how to apply, please go to: https://english.hi.is/vacancies
The primary aim of CMBeam is to develop advanced algorithms, measurement systems, and methodologies that are critical to the design and calibration of next-generation telescopes used to study the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Our efforts include the construction a state-of-the-art cryogenic holography facility for the purposes of testing optical systems of current and future experiments.
These efforts can be developed in the context of existing CMB experiments that group members are participating in, including but not limited to the Simons Observatory, the Taurus balloon-borne experiment, and LiteBIRD.
Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions.
The featured image was generated with the DALL·E engine using the prompt: A charcoal drawing of a radio telescope with Icelandic mountains in the background.
