Presentation
The Tenerife Microwave Spectrometer (TMS) is an ultra-high sensitive spectrometer in the 10-20GHz range ( Rubiño-Martin et al. 2020 ). The hardware of the instrument is fully funded, and it is now in the final stage of implementation. TMS will be located at the Teide Observatory (2,400m above sea level) in Tenerife (Canary Islands), a site with excellent observing conditions for microwave observations (median pwv of 3.5 mm), and with a long tradition (of more than 35 years) in CMB research .
The main TMS scientific driver is to accurately measure absolute distortions of the sky spectrum in the 10–20GHz frequency range, with special emphasis on the characterization of the absolute synchrotron monopole, and the possible deviations of the CMB spectrum from a pure blackbody law. TMS will provide an absolute calibration for the QUIJOTE experiment , and it will also serve as a prototype for future instruments of its type, both ground-based and satellites. Among its new instrumental design is an octave bandwidth high quality cryogenic front-end, a thermally stabilized cold black body and a new design of a Direct Digital Data Acquisition (DDDA) based on FPGAs. The spectrometer will have a nominal resolution of 250 MHz, giving 40 spectrally stable sub-bands.
TMS is led by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, with an instrumental participation from the INAF group (Bologna), the University of Milano, the Universidad Politecnica de Cartagena (UPCT) and the IDOM company.
