A laser scanning device for cryogenic beam steering

Published

March 2, 2026

Author(s)

Jonathan Dean, Avirup Roy, Nathan Ortiz, Joel Weber, Joel Ullom, Daniel Swetz, Galen O'Neil

Abstract

It is often desirable to steer light within a cryostat and have a well focussed laser spot incident upon a detector. We demonstrate operation of superconducting transition-edge sensor microcalorimeters with a laser scanning device co-located on the 20 mK mixing plate of a dilution refrigerator. The scanner directs a 515 nm laser beam with spot size < 40 μm over a range of ±14 mm in two orthogonal axes incident on the detector array. We present the optical elements of the system, show that the detector noise spectrum is unchanged when the scanner is operating or off, and observe less than 340 nW power dissipation in our use-case. We are developing the system to allow simultaneous excitation of the sensors with optical light from the laser scanner and X-rays through a thin Al filter. Further, characterisation of detector artifacts including cross-talk, position dependences, and drift corrections will be more effectively studied with the system described in this work.

Citation

IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

Volume

36

Issue

6

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/TASC.2026.3669030

Local Download

Keywords

Transition-edge sensor, superconducting detector, laser, X-ray detector, MEMS

Citation

Dean, J. , Roy, A. , Ortiz, N. , Weber, J. , Ullom, J. , Swetz, D. and O'Neil, G. (2026), A laser scanning device for cryogenic beam steering, IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/TASC.2026.3669030, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=960402 (Accessed July 16, 2026)

Additional citation formats