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We report on extensive testing carried out on the optical fibers for the VIRUS instrument. The primary result of this work explores how 10+ years of simulated wear on a VIRUS fiber bundle affects both transmission and focal ratio degradation (FRD) of the optical fibers. During the accelerated lifetime tests we continuously monitored the fibers for signs of FRD. We find that transient FRD events were common during the portions of the tests when motion was at telescope slew rates, but dropped to negligible levels during rates of motion typical for science observation. Tests of fiber transmission and FRD conducted both before and after the lifetime tests reveal that while transmission values do not change over the 10+ years of simulated wear, a clear increase in FRD is seen in all 18 fibers tested. This increase in FRD is likely due to microfractures that develop over time from repeated flexure of the fiber bundle, and stands in contrast to the transient FRD events that stem from localized stress and subsequent modal diffusion of light within the fibers. There was no measurable wavelength dependence on the increase in FRD over 350 nm to 600 nm. We also report on bend radius tests conducted on individual fibers and find the 266 microns VIRUS fibers to be immune to bending-induced FRD at bend radii of R > 10cm. Below this bend radius FRD increases slightly with decreasing radius. Lastly, we give details of a degradation seen in the fiber bundle currently deployed on the Mitchell Spectrograph (formally VIRUS-P) at McDonald Observatory. The degradation is shown to be caused by a localized shear in a select number of optical fibers that leads to an explosive form of FRD. In a few fibers, the overall transmission loss through the instrument can exceed 80%.
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CubeSats are excellent platforms to rapidly perform simple space experiments. Several hundreds of CubeSats have already been successfully launched in the past few years and the number of announced launches grows every year. These platforms provide an easy access to space for universities and organizations which otherwise could not afford it. However, these spacecraft still rely on RF communications, where the spectrum is already crowded and cannot support the growing demand for data transmission to the ground. Lasercom holds the promise to be the solution to this problem, with a potential improvement of several orders of magnitude in the transmission capacity, while keeping a low size, weight and power. Between 2016 and 2017, The Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS), a joint institute of the California Institute of Technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, brought together a group of space scientists and lasercom engineers to address the current challenges that this technology faces, in order to enable it to compete with RF and eventually replace it when high-data rate is needed. After two one-week workshops, the working group started developing a report addressing three study cases: low Earth orbit, crosslinks and deep space. This paper presents the main points and conclusions of these KISS workshops.
The third-generation South Pole Telescope camera is designed to measure the cosmic microwave background across three frequency bands (95, 150 and 220 GHz) with ~16,000 transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers. Each multichroic pixel on a detector wafer has a broadband sinuous antenna that couples power to six TESs, one for each of the three observing bands and both polarization directions, via lumped element filters. Ten detector wafers populate the focal plane, which is coupled to the sky via a large-aperture optical system. Here we present the frequency band characterization with Fourier transform spectroscopy, measurements of optical time constants, beam properties, and optical and polarization efficiencies of the focal plane. The detectors have frequency bands consistent with our simulations, and have high average optical efficiency which is 86%, 77% and 66% for the 95, 150 and 220 GHz detectors. The time constants of the detectors are mostly between 0.5 ms and 5 ms. The beam is round with the correct size, and the polarization efficiency is more than 90% for most of the bolometers
We report on the design and performance of Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) sensitive to single photons in the optical to near-infrared range using hafnium as the sensor material. Our test device had a superconducting transition temperature of 395 mK and a room temperature normal state resistivity of 97 $mu Omega$ cm with an RRR = 1.6. Resonators on the device displayed internal quality factors of around 200,000. Similar to the analysis of MKIDs made from other highly resistive superconductors, we find that modeling the temperature response of the detector requires an extra broadening parameter in the superconducting density of states. Finally, we show that this material and design is compatible with a full-array fabrication process which resulted in pixels with decay times of about 40 $mu$s and resolving powers of ~9 at 800 nm.
Euclid is a space telescope currently developed in the framework of the ESA Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 Program. It addresses fundamental cosmological questions related to dark matter and dark energy. The lens system of one of the two scientific key instruments [a combined near-infrared spectrometer and photometer (NISP)] was designed, built-up and tested at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE). We present the final imaging quality of this diffraction-limited optical assembly with two complementary approaches, namely a point-spread function and a Shack-Hartmann sensor-based wavefront measurement. The tests are performed under space operating conditions within a cryostat. The large field of view of Euclids wide-angle objective is sampled with a pivot arm, carrying a measurement telescope and the sensors. A sequence of highly accurate movements to several field positions is carried out by a large computer controlled hexapod. Both measurement approaches are compared among one another and with the corresponding simulations. They demonstrate in good agreement a solely diffraction limited optical performance over the entire field of view.
We describe the optical characterisation of two silicon cold-electron bolometers each consisting of a small ($32 times 14~mathrm{mu m}$) island of degenerately doped silicon with superconducting aluminium contacts. Radiation is coupled into the silicon absorber with a twin-slot antenna designed to couple to 160-GHz radiation through a silicon lens.The first device has a highly doped silicon absorber, the second has a highly doped strained-silicon absorber.Using a novel method of cross-correlating the outputs from two parallel amplifiers, we measure noise-equivalent powers of $3.0 times 10^{-16}$ and $6.6 times 10^{-17}~mathrm{W,Hz^{-1/2}}$ for the control and strained device, respectively, when observing radiation from a 77-K source. In the case of the strained device, the noise-equivalent power is limited by the photon noise.
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