Speaker: Bhaskar Mondal, 2023 - 2024 Graduate Student Fellow
Date/Time: March 1, 2024 / 12 noon central.
Location: NCSA, 1040.
Zoom: https://illinois.zoom.us/j/82318062756?pwd=M3g1MFF6cytsOWFEbmU0UW1XWVoxQT09
Title/Abstract:
CMB-Steroids: Exploring the Solar System in mm wavelengths
CMB-S4 [1] is the next generation of ground-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. With a total of 21 telescopes at the South Pole and the Atacama desert, this campaign is going to observe the accessible sky at millimeter wavelengths for a duration of seven years. Our research goal is to better understand what new physics we can derive from the CMB-S4 data in the context of Solar System Objects (SSOs). Observations of asteroids in mm wavelengths [2] have reported consistently lower fluxes than predicted by modeling their surface temperature profiles with IR data. Since the mm wave radiation has a significant contribution from subsurface emission, researchers have noted that it might be an indication of a large temperature gradient in the immediate subsurface region. To address this anomaly, we have developed a thermophysical solver that can predict asteroid temperatures (and thus flux) of asteroids throughout the body, given a set of material properties, the shape and orbit position with respect to the Sun. We are comparing our new model against IR observations as well as observations of asteroids from the South Pole Telescope. Our objective is to reconcile the observed and predicted flux, thus unraveling the underlying factors contributing to the disparity. Once we successfully resolve this discrepancy, and achieve accurate predictions of asteroid fluxes in mm wavelengths, we will run the Sorcha solar system simulator [3], slated for release this summer, which will ultimately let us predict the prospect of CMB-S4 in terms of observability and discoverability of SSOs.
References:
[1] CMB-S4 – CMB-S4 Next Generation CMB Experiment. https://cmb-s4.org/
[2] Chichura, P. M., Foster, A., Patel, C., Ossa-Jaen, N., Ade, P. A. R., Ahmed, Z., ... & Young, M. R. (2022). Asteroid measurements at millimeter wavelengths with the South Pole telescope. The Astrophysical Journal, 936(2), 173.
[3] Sorcha. https://github.com/dirac-institute/sorcha