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The Simons Observatory 220 and 280 GHz Focal-Plane Module: Design and Initial Characterization

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Abstract

The Simons Observatory (SO) will detect and map the temperature and polarization of the millimeter-wavelength sky from Cerro Toco, Chile, across a range of angular scales, providing rich data sets for cosmological and astrophysical analysis. The SO focal planes will be tiled with compact hexagonal packages, called universal focal-plane modules (UFMs), in which the transition-edge sensor (TES) detectors are coupled to 100 mK microwave-multiplexing electronics. Three different types of dichroic TES detector arrays with bands centered at 30/40, 90/150, and 220/280 GHz will be implemented across the 49 planned UFMs. The 90/150 GHz and 220/280 GHz arrays each contain 1764 TESes, which are read out with two 910x multiplexer circuits. The modules contain a series of routed silicon chips, which are packaged together in a controlled electromagnetic environment and operated at 100 mK. Following an overview of the module design, we report on early results from the first 220/280 GHz UFM, including detector yield, as well as readout and detector noise levels.

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Notes

  1. https://simonsobservatory.org/.

  2. For historical reasons, SO calls the highest detector frequency band the “ultra-high" frequency to distinguish it from Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) high-frequency (HF) arrays.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by a grant from the Simons Foundation (Award #457687, B.K.). ZBH acknowledges support from the NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities Award. SKC acknowledges support from NSF award AST-2001866. Zhilei Xu is supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through grant GBMF5215 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Joseph Henry Laboratories, Jadwin Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Erin Healy, Daniel Dutcher, Zachary Atkins, Heather McCarrick, Rita Sonka, Suzanne T. Staggs, Yuhan Wang & Kaiwen Zheng

  2. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, CO, USA

    Jason Austermann, Shannon Duff & Johannes Hubmayr

  3. Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Steve K. Choi, Cody J. Duell, Zachary B. Huber, Michael D. Niemack & Eve Vavagiakis

  4. Department of Astronomy, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Steve K. Choi & Michael D. Niemack

  5. Department of Physics, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Nicholas Galitzki

  6. Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Bradley R. Johnson

  7. Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Michael D. Niemack

  8. MIT Kavli Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Zhilei Xu

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  1. Erin Healy
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  2. Daniel Dutcher
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  3. Zachary Atkins
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  4. Jason Austermann
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  11. Bradley R. Johnson
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  16. Eve Vavagiakis
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  19. Kaiwen Zheng
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Correspondence to Erin Healy.

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Healy, E., Dutcher, D., Atkins, Z. et al. The Simons Observatory 220 and 280 GHz Focal-Plane Module: Design and Initial Characterization. J Low Temp Phys 209, 815–823 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-022-02788-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-022-02788-8

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