20170517 Telecon Notes

Legend: Bold face encodes 'need more information'; italics encodes issues that are (semi)settled in the sense that they are the basis for future discussions; Underlined Text are action items.

Attending: Shaul, Julian, Amy, Brendan, Jamie, Al, Lloyd, Charles, Mark (Notes by Julian)

NASA Probe PI kick-off telecon: anything we want to add/ask?

• Technology
  • Shaul: How do we estimate the cost of technology that will mature in the near future?
• Team X design process
  • Shaul: how much is available, can we iterate?
  • Jamie: need a sufficiently mature concept to make Team X process most effective; can start a coarse/piecewise process before full end-to-end session; can pay for 1 person’s time rather than a full team;
  • Charles: no fixed cost for Team X - iterate with Team X on cost/process; is the budget overall or per probe?
  • Amy: from Keith, 2 instrument sessions + 1 mission session; ultimately 1 detailed design study (by us, fleshing out Team X mission session)
    • Preliminary meeting to set up plan
    • Instrument session is a unique unit; process of in-person meetings & independent effort report writing
    • If we just have 1 instrument, maybe 1 can be used for eg. cryogenics
    • need to decide on instrument(s) - imager, spectrometer, both …
    • Mission session is group activity after instrument sessions
    • All probes have the same budget, process adapts to individual need
  • Jamie: process is flexible - ask for what makes most sense for us; big question is the budget! Pertinent question for NASA telecon.
  • Shaul: what is cost equivalent of 2 instrument + 1 mission studies
  • Charles: mission study can be 1 to many days; roughly $30,000/day
    • Teams:
      • Team X - instrument team (engineers)
      • Team X - mission team (somewhat broader)
      • A Team - brainstorming session to solve particular problem ((case-specific experts); we’re fairly mature, don’t want/need open-ended brainstorming but may use for specific target questions (branch points)
  • Jamie: Reports & Outreach plans? Special session at AAS - anything more? post-report Outreach?
• When do we go to Team X - early (10-11/17) or late (1-3/18). Early implies significant decisions this summer
  • Charles: the further along we are the better - things Team X can’t help with (simulations) must be done first.
  • Jamie: timing of money? Amy: should be available in late ’17, but it’s Keith’s money to manage.
  • Shaul: No advantage to going early. No argument with that!

• Resolution/Delensing

  sigma(r=0) for f_sky=0.5, l_min = 2, 20, tau=0.06, white noise = 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 uK-arcmin
  Reionization bump is a big advantage
  Trade-off between noise and resolution (smaller beam/more noise vs larger beam/lower noise)
      Doubling noise & beam is about flat; what is the cost trade-off?
      At 0.5 uK-arcmin going from 1.2m to 1.4m only improves sigma by 25%
  2uK-arcmin is almost flat; resolution doesn’t help
  Resolution => mode-sensitivity; dominated by E/B; want to reach l~500 in E 
  Comparable S4 effort in progress

• PCOS Technology Needs:
  • Influences SAT call for March 18; funding in FY19.
  • 3 CMB-related areas already being tracked
    • mm-wave focal plane arrays for CMB polarimetry
    • mm-wave optical elements
    • high-efficiency cryogenics: 20K ⇒ <1K
  • Jamie: PCOS program can only fund ~6 things - ranking guidance given by PAGs; PhysPAG rolled things into broad areas to improve priority ranking. Ranked < 10 *very* unlikely to be funded. PhysPAG members: Ed Wollack, Amber Miller.
  • Previously “advanced focal planes” (driven by IR multiplexing) was separate, but it has merged into general FP.
  • Charles: Is “mm” too restrictive? Formally 30-300GHz (Jamie says 30-600MHz is quoted) - maybe push down to 10GHz?
  • Julian: Software not covered by SAT (from Rita)