Millimeter wavelength brightness fluctuations of the atmosphere above the South Pole

We report measurements of the millimeter wavelength brightness fluctuations produced by the atmosphere above the South Pole made with the Arcminute Cosmology Bolometer Array Receiver (ACBAR). The data span the 2002 austral winter during which ACBAR was mounted on the Viper Telescope at the South Pole. We recover the atmospheric signal in the presence of instrument noise by calculating the correlation between signals from distinct elements of the ACBAR bolometer array. With this method, it is possible to measure atmospheric brightness fluctuations with a high signal-to-noise ratio even under the most stable atmospheric conditions. The observed atmospheric signal is characterized by the parameters of the Kolmogorov-Taylor (KT) model, which are the amplitude and power-law exponent describing the atmospheric power spectrum and the two components of the wind angular velocity at the time of the observation. The KT model is typically a good description of the observed fluctuations, and fits to the data produce values of the Kolmogorov exponent that are consistent with theoretical expectations. By combining the wind angular velocity results with measurements of the wind linear velocity, we find that the altitude of the observed atmospheric fluctuations is consistent with the distribution of water vapor determined from radiosonde data. For data corresponding to frequency passbands centered on 150, 219, and 274 GHz, we obtain median fluctuation power amplitudes of (10, 38, 74) mK(2) rad(-5/3) in Rayleigh-Jeans temperature units. Comparing with previous work, we find that these median amplitudes are approximately an order of magnitude smaller than those found at the South Pole during the austral summer and at least 30 times lower than found at the ALMA site in the Atacama desert.