A microwave kinetic inductance camera for sub/millimeter astrophysics

Jason Glenn; Peter K. Day; Matt Ferry; Jiansong Gao; Sunil R. Golwala; Shwetank Kumar; Henry G. LeDuc; Philip R. Maloney; Benjamin A. Mazin; Hien Nguyen; Omid Noroozian; Jack Sayers; James Schlaerth; John E. Vaillancourt; Anastasios Vayokanis; Jonas Zmuidzinas

doi:10.1117/12.790050

18 July 2008 A microwave kinetic inductance camera for sub/millimeter astrophysics

Jason Glenn, Peter K. Day, Matt Ferry, Jiansong Gao, Sunil R. Golwala, Shwetank Kumar, Henry G. LeDuc, Philip R. Maloney, Benjamin A. Mazin, Hien Nguyen, Omid Noroozian, Jack Sayers, James Schlaerth, John E. Vaillancourt, Anastasios Vayokanis, Jonas Zmuidzinas

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 7020, Millimeter and Submillimeter Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy IV; 70200B (2008) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.790050
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2008, Marseille, France

Abstract

The MKID Camera is a millimeter/submillimeter instrument being built for astronomical observations from the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory. It utilizes microwave kinetic inductance detectors, which are rapidly achieving near-BLIP sensitivity for ground-based observations, and a software-defined radio readout technique for elegant multiplexing of a large number of detectors. The Camera will have 592 pixels distributed over 16 tiles in the focal plane, with four colors per pixel matched to the 750 μm, 850 μm, and 1.0 - 1.5 mm (split in two) atmospheric transmission windows. As a precursor to building the full-up camera and to enable ongoing detector testing, we have built a DemoCam comprised of a 16-pixel MKID array with which we have made preliminary astronomical observations. These observations demonstrate the viability of MKIDs for submillimeter astronomy, provide insight into systematic design issues that must be considered for MKID-based instruments, and they are the first astronomical observations with antenna-coupled superconducting detectors. In this paper, we describe the basic systems and specifications of the MKID Camera, we describe our DemoCam observations, and we comment on the status of submillimeter MKID sensitivities.

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Jason Glenn, Peter K. Day, Matt Ferry, Jiansong Gao, Sunil R. Golwala, Shwetank Kumar, Henry G. LeDuc, Philip R. Maloney, Benjamin A. Mazin, Hien Nguyen, Omid Noroozian, Jack Sayers, James Schlaerth, John E. Vaillancourt, Anastasios Vayokanis, and Jonas Zmuidzinas "A microwave kinetic inductance camera for sub/millimeter astrophysics", Proc. SPIE 7020, Millimeter and Submillimeter Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy IV, 70200B (18 July 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.790050

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