A dual-band millimeter-wave kinetic inductance camera for the IRAM 30-meter telescope

TL;DR

This paper presents the development and successful testing of a dual-band millimeter-wave kinetic inductance camera for the IRAM 30-meter telescope, enabling simultaneous imaging at 150 GHz and 220 GHz with improved sensitivity.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new dual-band KID camera with enhanced electronics and optics, achieving near photon-noise limited sensitivity and demonstrating its capability through imaging of various astronomical objects.

Findings

Successful dual-band operation at 150 GHz and 220 GHz

Achieved optical NEP of around 2×10^-16 W/Hz^1/2

Imaged faint and extended astronomical objects

Abstract

Context. The Neel IRAM KIDs Array (NIKA) is a fully-integrated measurement system based on kinetic inductance detectors (KIDs) currently being developed for millimeter wave astronomy. In a first technical run, NIKA was successfully tested in 2009 at the Institute for Millimetric Radio Astronomy (IRAM) 30-meter telescope at Pico Veleta, Spain. This prototype consisted of a 27-42 pixel camera imaging at 150 GHz. Subsequently, an improved system has been developed and tested in October 2010 at the Pico Veleta telescope. The instrument upgrades included dual-band optics allowing simultaneous imaging at 150 GHz and 220 GHz, faster sampling electronics enabling synchronous measurement of up to 112 pixels per measurement band, improved single-pixel sensitivity, and the fabrication of a sky simulator to replicate conditions present at the telescope. Results. The new dual-band NIKA was successfully tested in October 2010, performing in-line with sky simulator predictions. Initially the sources targeted during the 2009 run were re-imaged, verifying the improved system performance. An optical NEP was then calculated to be around 2 \dot 10-16 W/Hz1/2. This improvement in comparison with the 2009 run verifies that NIKA is approaching the target sensitivity for photon-noise limited ground-based detectors. Taking advantage of the larger arrays and increased sensitivity, a number of scientifically-relevant faint and extended objects were then imaged including the Galactic Center SgrB2(FIR1), the radio galaxy Cygnus A and the NGC1068 Seyfert galaxy. These targets were all observed simultaneously in the 150 GHz and 220 GHz atmospheric windows.