Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userLarge-area Reflective Infrared Filters for Millimeter/sub-mm Telescopes
145
0
0.0
(
0
)
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
Ground-based millimeter and sub-millimeter telescopes are attempting to image the sky with ever-larger cryogenically-cooled bolometer arrays, but face challenges in mitigating the infrared loading accompanying large apertures. Absorptive infrared filters supported by mechanical coolers scale insufficiently with aperture size. Reflective metal-mesh filters placed behind the telescope window provide a scalable solution in principle, but have been limited by photolithography constraints to diameters under 300 mm. We present laser etching as an alternate technique to photolithography for fabrication of large-area reflective filters, and show results from lab tests of 500 mm-diameter filters. Filters with up to 700 mm diameter can be fabricated using laser etching with existing capability.
rate research
Read More
Infrared (IR) blocking filters are crucial for controlling the radiative loading on cryogenic systems and for optimizing the sensitivity of bolometric detectors in the far-IR. We present a new IR filter approach based on a combination of patterned frequency selective structures on silicon and a thin (50 $mu textrm{m}$ thick) absorptive composite based on powdered reststrahlen absorbing materials. For a 300 K blackbody, this combination reflects $sim$50% of the incoming light and blocks textgreater 99.8% of the total power with negligible thermal gradients and excellent low frequency transmission. This allows for a reduction in the IR thermal loading to negligible levels in a single cold filter. These composite filters are fabricated on silicon substrates which provide excellent thermal transport laterally through the filter and ensure that the entire area of the absorptive filter stays near the bath temperature. A metamaterial antireflection coating cut into these substrates reduces in-band reflections to below 1%, and the in-band absorption of the powder mix is below 1% for signal bands below 750 GHz. This type of filter can be directly incorporated into silicon refractive optical elements.
Semi-empirical models of the solar Chromosphere show in their emission spectrum, tomography property at millimeter, sub-millimeter, and infrared wavelengths for the center of the solar disk. In this work, we studied this property in the solar limb using our numerical code PakalMPI, focusing in the region where the solar atmosphere becomes optically thick. Individual contribution of Bremsstrahlung and H- opacities was take into account in the radiative transfer process. We found that the tomography property remains in all the spectrum region under study at limb altitudes. For frequencies be- tween 2 GHz and 5 THz the contribution of Bremsstrahlung is the dominant process above the solar limb.
Chromatic effects are usually associated with refractive optics, so reflective telescopes are assumed to be free from them. We show that all-reflective optics still bears significant levels of such perturbations, which is especially critical to modern micro-arcsecond astrometric experiments. We analyze the image formation and measurement process to derive a precise definition of the chromatic variation of the image position, and we evaluate the key aspects of optical design with respect to chromaticity. The fundamental requirement related to chromaticity is the symmetry of the optical design and of the wavefront errors. Finally, we address some optical engineering issues, such as manufacturing and alignment, providing recommendations to minimize the degradation that chromaticity introduces into astrometry.
We have developed a novel two-layer anti-reflection (AR) coating method for large-diameter infrared (IR) filters made of alumina, for the use at cryogenic temperatures in millimeter wave measurements. Thermally- sprayed mullite and polyimide foam (Skybond Foam) are used as the AR material. An advantage of the Skybond Foam is that the index of refraction is chosen between 1.1 and 1.7 by changing the filling factor. Combination with mullite is suitable for wide-band millimeter wave measurements with sufficient IR cutoff capability. We present the material properties, fabrication of a large-diameter IR filter made of alumina with this AR coating method, and characterizations at cryogenic temperatures. This technology can be applied to a low-temperature receiver system with a large-diameter focal plane for next-generation cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization measurements, such as POLARBEAR-2 (PB-2).
We designed, fabricated, and measured anti-reflection coating (ARC) on sapphire that has 116% fractional bandwidth and transmission of at least 97% in the millimeter wave band. The ARC was based on patterning pyramid-like sub-wavelength structures (SWS) using ablation with a 15 W femto-second laser operating at 1030 nm. One side of each of two discs was fabricated with SWS that had a pitch of 0.54 mm and height of 2 mm. The average ablation volume removal rate was 1.6 mm$^{3}$/min. Measurements of the two-disc sandwich show transmission higher than 97% between 43 and 161 GHz. We characterize instrumental polarization (IP) arising from differential transmission due to asymmetric SWS. We find that with proper alignment of the two disc sandwich RMS IP across the band is predicted to be 0.07% at normal incidence, and less than 0.6% at incidence angles up to 20 degrees. These results indicate that laser ablation of SWS on sapphire and on other hard materials such as alumina is an effective way to fabricate broad-band ARC.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
