Initial performance of the BICEP2 antenna-coupled superconducting bolometers at the South Pole
Year: 2010
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: We report on the preliminary detector performance of the Bicep2 mm-wave polarimeter, deployed in 2009 to the South Pole. Bicep2 is currently imaging the polarization of the cosmic microwave background at 150 GHz using an array of 512 antenna-coupled superconducting bolometers. The antennas, band-defining filters and transition edge sensor (TES) bolometers are photolithographically fabricated on 4 silicon tiles. Each tile consists of an 8×8 grid of ~7 mm spatial pixels, for a total of 256 detector pairs. A spatial pixel contains 2 sets of orthogonal antenna slots summed in-phase, with each set coupled to a TES by a filtered microstrip. The detectors are read out using time-domain multiplexed SQUIDs. The detector pair of each spatial pixel is differenced to measure polarization. We report on the performance of the Bicep2 detectors in the field, including the focal plane yield, detector and multiplexer optimization, detector noise and stability, and a preliminary estimate of the improvement in mapping speed compared to Bicep1.
DOI: 10.1117/12.857861
Authors: J. A. Brevik, R. W. Aikin, M. Amiri, S. J. Benton, J. J. Bock, J. A. Bonetti, B. Burger, C. D. Dowell, L. Duband, J. P. Filippini, S. R. Golwala, M. Halpern, M. Hasselfield, G. Hilton, V. V. Hristov, K. Irwin, J. P. Kaufman, B. G. Keating, J. M. Kovac, C. L. Kuo, A. E. Lange, E. M. Leitch, C. B. Netterfield, H. T. Nguyen, R. W. Ogburn IV, A. Orlando, C. Pryke, C. Reintsema, S. Richter, J. E. Ruhl, M. Runyan, C. Sheehy, Z. Staniszewski, R. Sudiwala, J. E. Tolan, A. D. Turner, P. Wilson, C. L. Wong
Institutions: California Institute of Technology, University of British Columbia, University of Toronto, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives, CEA Grenoble, National Institute of Standards and Technology, University of California San Diego, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian, Stanford University
Language: English
Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2038523922