Title: THz Atmospheric Transmission Measured at Dome A in Antarctic

Speaker: Sheng-Cai Shi, Research Fellow
Institute: Purple Mountain Observatory, CAS, China
              Key Lab of Radio Astronomy, CAS, China
Time: 2017.03.09（Thursday） 14:30
Place: Physics Building 573, Haiyun Campus, Xiamen University
Abstract:The terahertz (THz) and FIR band is a frequency regime to be fully explored in astronomy. However, water vapor renders the terrestrial atmosphere opaque to this band over nearly all of the Earth's surface. Dome A in Antarctic – the site for China's Antarctic Observatory, with an altitude of 4093 m and temperature below -80 Celsius degree in winter, may offer the best possible access for ground-based astronomical observations in the THz and FIR band. We recently carried out measurements of atmospheric radiation from Dome A spanning the entire water vapor pure rotation band from 20 μm to 350 μm wavelength by an unmanned Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS). Our measurements expose atmospheric windows having significant transmission throughout this band. This talk will firstly introduce our FTS measurement results from Dome A, and then the latest development of superconducting mixers and detectors for the DATE5 telescope proposed to build at China's Antarctic Observatory.