What happens when a microwave telescope meets modern optical design? The enabling of high-resolution wide-field radio astronomy surveys! A proposal has been put forth by Stephen Padin of the University of Chicago for a 5-m telescope based on a Three-Mirror Anastigmat (TMA) design popular for many optical telescopes (including LSST, JWST, and WFIRST, to name a few). Such a telescope could deliver an 8°–12° diffraction limited field-of-view in the 1- to 3-mm wavelength range with an angular resolution of 1.5'. The aperture of the designs is unobscured, and all surfaces are monolithic to avoid diffraction and scatter features. The mirrors can be designed and coated to provide -38 dB cross polarization. Finally, the telescope would be mounted to provide full boresight rotation at all observing angles. The result is an observatory especially suited to perform a cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarized mapping to 100s nK sensitivity. This would allow observational confirmation of gravitational wave primordial B-mode imprinting as well as other CMB imprinting mechanisms to study para-standard-model light particles, neutrino mass, baryon distributions, and momentums. Alignment tolerances of a few millimeters allows resolution to be maintained, and the supporting structure can accommodate the environmental loads in various locations including the Atacama Desert and Antarctica.

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