U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

PUBLICATIONS

Demonstration of 220/280 GHz Multichroic Feedhorn-Coupled TES Polarimeter

Published

Author(s)

Samantha L. Walker, Carlos E. Sierra, Jason E. Austermann, James A. Beall, Daniel T. Becker, Bradley J. Dober, Shannon M. Duff, Gene C. Hilton, Johannes Hubmayr, Jeffrey L. Van Lanen, Jeff McMahon, Sara M. Simon, Joel N. Ullom, Michael R. Vissers

Abstract

We describe the design and measurement of feedhorn-coupled, transition-edge sensor (TES) polarimeters with two passbands centered at 220 GHz and 280 GHz, intended for observations of the cosmic microwave background. Each pixel couples polarized light in two linear polarizations by use of a planar orthomode transducer and senses power via four TES bolometers, one for each band in each linear polarization. Previous designs of this detector architecture incorporated passbands from 27 to 220 GHz; we now demonstrate this technology at frequencies up to 315 GHz. Observational passbands are defined with an on-chip diplexer, and Fourier-transform-spectrometer measurements are in excellent agreement with simulations. We find coupling from feedhorn to TES bolometer using a cryogenic, temperature-controlled thermal source. We determine the optical efficiency of our device is η=77%+/-6% (75+/-5%) for 220 (280) GHz, relative to the designed passband shapes. Lastly, we compare two power-termination schemes commonly used in wide-bandwidth millimeter-wave polarimeters and find equal performance in terms of optical efficiency and passband shape.
Citation
Journal of Low Temperature Physics
Volume
199
Pub Type
Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-019-02316-1
Local Download

Keywords

feedhorn, polarimeter, microwave, millimeter-wave, cosmic microwave background, CMB, transition-edge-sensor, TES
Physics and Condensed matter

Citation

Walker, S. , Sierra, C. , Austermann, J. , Beall, J. , Becker, D. , Dober, B. , Duff, S. , Hilton, G. , Hubmayr, J. , Van, J. , McMahon, J. , Simon, S. , Ullom, J. and Vissers, M. (2020), Demonstration of 220/280 GHz Multichroic Feedhorn-Coupled TES Polarimeter, Journal of Low Temperature Physics, [online], https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-019-02316-1 (Accessed May 14, 2024)

Issues

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact reflib@nist.gov.

Created January 3, 2020, Updated June 17, 2020