The Tenerife Microwave Spectrometer (TMS) experiment: studying the absolute spectrum of the sky emission in the 10-20GHz range

The Tenerife Microwave Spectrometer (TMS) is a new 10-20 GHz experiment that will be installed at the Teide Observatory (Tenerife, Spain), next to the QUIJOTE CMB experiment. The main TMS scientific driver is to accurately measure absolute distortions of the sky spectrum in the 10-20 GHz frequency range, with special emphasis on the characterization of the absolute synchrotron monopole from our Galaxy, 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 wide-band Fourier transform spectrometer. The spectrometer will have a resolution of 250 MHz, giving 40 spectrally stable sub-bands.