2023/11/03 by Logan Foote, Foote, Logan, Chris Albert +31 · 6 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det) #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Superconducting and THz Device Technology
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2311.02175
openalex publication_date 2023/11/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Far-infrared (far-IR) astrophysics missions featuring actively cooled telescopes will offer orders of magnitude observing speed improvement at wavelengths where galaxies and forming planetary systems emit most of their light. The PRobe far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics (PRIMA), which is currently under study, emphasizes low and moderate resolution spectroscopy throughout the far-IR. Full utilization of PRIMA's cold telescope requires far-IR detector arrays with per-pixel noise equivalent powers (NEPs) at or below 1 x 10-19 W/rtHz. We are developing low-volume Aluminum kinetic inductance detector (KID) arrays to reach these sensitivities. We will present on the development of our long-wavelength (210 um) array approach, with a focus on multitone measurements of our 1,008-pixel arrays. We measure an NEP below 1 x 10-19 W/rtHz for 73 percent of our pixels.