@inproceedings{3789206bad14472989b97fba05d9ebef,
title = "Preflight characterization of the BLAST-TNG receiver and detector arrays",
abstract = "The Next Generation Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST-TNG) is a submillimeter mapping experiment planned for a 28 day long-duration balloon (LDB) flight from McMurdo Station, Antarctica during the 2018-2019 season. BLAST-TNG will detect submillimeter polarized interstellar dust emission, tracing magnetic fields in galactic molecular clouds. BLAST-TNG will be the first polarimeter with the sensitivity and resolution to probe the ∼0.1 parsec-scale features that are critical to understanding the origin of structures in the interstellar medium. BLAST-TNG features three detector arrays operating at wavelengths of 250, 350, and 500 m (1200, 857, and 600 GHz) comprised of 918, 469, and 272 dual-polarization pixels, respectively. Each pixel is made up of two crossed microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs). These arrays are cooled to 275 mK in a cryogenic receiver. Each MKID has a different resonant frequency, allowing hundreds of resonators to be read out on a single transmission line. This inherent ability to be frequency-domain multiplexed simplifies the cryogenic readout hardware, but requires careful optical testing to map out the physical location of each resonator on the focal plane. Receiver-level optical testing was carried out using both a cryogenic source mounted to a movable xy-stage with a shutter, and a beam-filling, heated blackbody source able to provide a 10-50 C temperature chop. The focal plane array noise properties, responsivity, polarization efficiency, instrumental polarization were measured. We present the preflight characterization of the BLAST-TNG cryogenic system and array-level optical testing of the MKID detector arrays in the flight receiver.",
keywords = "BLAST-TNG, Cryostat, Instrumentation, Interstellar medium, MKIDs, Polarimetry, Scientific ballooning, Star formation, Submillimeter",
author = "Lourie, {Nathan P.} and Ade, {Peter A.R.} and Angile, {Francisco E.} and Ashton, {Peter C.} and Austermann, {Jason E.} and Devlin, {Mark J.} and Bradley Dober and Nicholas Galitzki and Jiansong Gao and Sam Gordon and Christopher Groppi and Jeffrey Klein and Hilton, {Gene C.} and Johannes Hubmayr and Dale Li and Ian Lowe and Hamdi Mani and Philip Mauskopf and McKenney, {Christopher M.} and Federico Nati and Giles Novak and Enzo Pascale and Giampaolo Pisano and Adrian Sinclair and Soler, {Juan D.} and Carole Tucker and Ullom, {Joel N.} and Michael Vissers and Williams, {Paul A.}",
note = "Funding Information: The BLAST-TNG collaboration acknowledges the support of NASA under award numbers NNX13AE50G and 80NSSC18K0481, and the NNX13CM03C. Detector development is supported in part by NASA through NNH13ZDA001N-APRA. J.D.S. acknowledges the support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program via the Consolidator Grant CSF-648505. S.G. is supported through a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF) NNX16AO91H. The BLAST-TNG telescope is supported in part through the NASA SBIR/STTR office and developed at Alliance Spacesystems. The BLAST-TNG collaboration would like to acknowledge the Xilinx University Program for their generous donation of five Virtex-6 FPGAs for use in our ROACH-2 readout electronics. The collaboration also acknowledges the extensive machining, design, and fabrication efforts of Jeffrey Hancock and Harold Borders at the University of Pennsylvania and Matthew Underhill at Arizona State University, as well as Richard Gummer and the team at Precision Cryogenics Inc, without whose dedication the development and subsequent rebuild of the receiver would not have been possible. The BLAST-TNG team also recognizes the contribution of undergraduate and post-baccalaureate interns to the receiver development, especially Mark Giovinazzi, Erin Healy, Gregory Kofman, Ariana Martino, Aaron Mathews, Timothy McSorely, Michael Plumb, and Nathan Schor, and Stephen Russell who built the calibration chopper used in the receiver testing. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 SPIE.; Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy IX 2018 ; Conference date: 12-06-2018 Through 15-06-2018",
year = "2018",
doi = "10.1117/12.2314396",
language = "English (US)",
isbn = "9781510619692",
series = "Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering",
publisher = "SPIE",
editor = "Jonas Zmuidzinas and Jian-Rong Gao",
booktitle = "Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy IX",
}