No Arabic abstract
The Simons Observatory (SO) is an upcoming polarization-sensitive Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiment on the Cerro Toco Plateau (Chile) with large overlap with other optical and infrared surveys (e.g., DESI, LSST, HSC). To enable the readout of bigO(10,000) detectors in each of the four telescopes of SO, we will employ the microwave SQUID multiplexing technology. With a targeted multiplexing factor of bigO{(1,000)}, microwave SQUID multiplexing has never been deployed on the scale needed for SO. Here we present the design of the cryogenic coaxial cable and RF component chain that connects room temperature readout electronics to superconducting resonators that are coupled to Transition Edge Sensor bolometers operating at sub-Kelvin temperatures. We describe design considerations including cryogenic RF component selection, system linearity, noise, and thermal power dissipation.
Advances in cosmic microwave background (CMB) science depend on increasing the number of sensitive detectors observing the sky. New instruments deploy large arrays of superconducting transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers tiled densely into ever larger focal planes. High multiplexing factors reduce the thermal loading on the cryogenic receivers and simplify their design. We present the design of focal-plane modules with an order of magnitude higher multiplexing factor than has previously been achieved with TES bolometers. We focus on the novel cold readout component, which employs microwave SQUID multiplexing ($mu$mux). Simons Observatory will use 49 modules containing 60,000 bolometers to make exquisitely sensitive measurements of the CMB. We validate the focal-plane module design, presenting measurements of the readout component with and without a prototype detector array of 1728 polarization-sensitive bolometers coupled to feedhorns. The readout component achieves a $95%$ yield and a 910 multiplexing factor. The median white noise of each readout channel is 65 $mathrm{pA/sqrt{Hz}}$. This impacts the projected SO mapping speed by $< 8%$, which is less than is assumed in the sensitivity projections. The results validate the full functionality of the module. We discuss the measured performance in the context of SO science requirements, which are exceeded.
We have designed and demonstrated a Superconducting Quantum Interference Device (SQUID) array linearized with cryogenic feedback. To achieve the necessary loop gain a 300 element series array SQUID is constructed from three monolithic 100-element series arrays. A feedback resistor completes the loop from the SQUID output to the input coil. The short feedback path of this Linearized SQUID Array (LISA) allows for a substantially larger flux-locked loop bandwidth as compared to a SQUID flux-locked loop that includes a room temperature amplifier. The bandwidth, linearity, noise performance, and dynamic range of the LISA are sufficient for its use in our target application: the multiplexed readout of transition-edge sensor bolometers.
The energy resolution of a single photon counting Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detector (MKID) can be degraded by noise coming from the primary low temperature amplifier in the detectors readout system. Until recently, quantum limited amplifiers have been incompatible with these detectors due to dynamic range, power, and bandwidth constraints. However, we show that a kinetic inductance based traveling wave parametric amplifier can be used for this application and reaches the quantum limit. The total system noise for this readout scheme was equal to ~2.1 in units of quanta. For incident photons in the 800 to 1300 nm range, the amplifier increased the average resolving power of the detector from ~6.7 to 9.3 at which point the resolution becomes limited by noise on the pulse height of the signal. Noise measurements suggest that a resolving power of up to 25 is possible if redesigned detectors can remove this additional noise source.
A technological milestone for experiments employing Transition Edge Sensor (TES) bolometers operating at sub-kelvin temperature is the deployment of detector arrays with 100s--1000s of bolometers. One key technology for such arrays is readout multiplexing: the ability to read out many sensors simultaneously on the same set of wires. This paper describes a frequency-domain multiplexed readout system which has been developed for and deployed on the APEX-SZ and South Pole Telescope millimeter wavelength receivers. In this system, the detector array is divided into modules of seven detectors, and each bolometer within the module is biased with a unique ~MHz sinusoidal carrier such that the individual bolometer signals are well separated in frequency space. The currents from all bolometers in a module are summed together and pre-amplified with Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUIDs) operating at 4 K. Room-temperature electronics demodulate the carriers to recover the bolometer signals, which are digitized separately and stored to disk. This readout system contributes little noise relative to the detectors themselves, is remarkably insensitive to unwanted microphonic excitations, and provides a technology pathway to multiplexing larger numbers of sensors.
The Simons Observatory (SO) will be a cosmic microwave background (CMB) survey experiment with three small-aperture telescopes and one large-aperture telescope, which will observe from the Atacama Desert in Chile. In total, SO will field $sim$70,000 transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers in six spectral bands centered between 27 and 280 GHz in order to achieve the sensitivity necessary to measure or constrain numerous cosmological quantities. The SO Universal Focal Plane Modules (UFMs) each contain a 150 mm diameter TES detector array, horn or lenslet optical coupling, cold readout components, and magnetic shielding. SO will use a microwave SQUID multiplexing ($mu$MUX) readout at an initial multiplexing factor of $sim$1000; the cold (100 mK) readout components are packaged in a $mu$MUX readout module, which is part of the UFM, and can also be characterized independently. The 100 mK stage TES bolometer arrays and microwave SQUIDs are sensitive to magnetic fields, and their measured response will vary with the degree to which they are magnetically shielded. We present measurements of the magnetic pickup of test microwave SQUID multiplexers as a study of various shielding configurations for the Simons Observatory. We discuss how these measurements motivated the material choice and design of the UFM magnetic shielding.