Bands

The Band defines all aspects of how detectors on an array will respond to incident radiation, including

  • How the detectors respond to different frequencies of radiation.

  • The efficiencies of the detectors.

  • The noise properties of the detectors.

  • The variation in detector gains across the array.

We can create the simplest possible Band as e.g.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from maria import Band

my_band = Band(center=150e9, # in Hz
               width=30e9) # in Hz

my_band.plot()

(Source code, png, hires.png, pdf)

../../../_images/bands-1.png

The center and width parameters define the shape of the passband $\tau(\nu)$. The convention of $\tau(\nu)$ is that of a Rayleigh-Jeans source, so that the power incident on each detector in the band will be

\[P = \eta k \int_0^\infty T_b(\nu) \tau(\nu) d\nu\]

where $\eta$ is the efficiency (from the supplied efficiency parameter) and $k$ is Boltzmann’s constant.