skip to content

Department of Physics

The Cavendish Laboratory
 

 

The Small Array
The Large Array

About the Project

  • The Arcminute Microkelvin Imager (AMI) is a twin-array radio telescope system dedicated to mapping of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.
  • The principal aims of AMI are:
    • to carry out a blind survey for clusters of galaxies using the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect, with the key advantages of the SZ's independence of cluster redshift and its independence of cluster gas distribution;
    • to image these clusters in detail;
    • to search for topological defects and for the first ionised structures;
    • and to follow up, at higher angular resolution, non-primordial features found by the Planck satellite.

Cavendish AP Group involvement

  • AMI is sited at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory at Lord's Bridge, near Cambridge, UK.
  • The Group is responsible for the design, construction, and operation of the array.
  • The advantage of the two array system is the ability to remove background sources, which can mask the SZ signal