Silicon-Based Antenna-Coupled Polarization-Sensitive Millimeter-Wave Bolometer Arrays for Cosmic Microwave Background Instruments

TL;DR

This paper presents silicon-based, polarization-sensitive millimeter-wave bolometer arrays with high efficiency for cosmic microwave background detection, utilizing innovative on-chip filtering and micro-machined structures for improved performance.

Contribution

Introduction of monocrystalline silicon substrates and micro-machined structures for efficient, uniform, and multi-chroic polarization-sensitive bolometer arrays in CMB instruments.

Findings

90% efficiency at 40 GHz

Compatible with multi-chroic operation

Effective out-of-band radiation rejection

Abstract

We describe feedhorn-coupled polarization-sensitive detector arrays that utilize monocrystalline silicon as the dielectric substrate material. Monocrystalline silicon has a low-loss tangent and repeatable dielectric constant, characteristics that are critical for realizing efficient and uniform superconducting microwave circuits. An additional advantage of this material is its low specific heat. In a detector pixel, two Transition-Edge Sensor (TES) bolometers are antenna-coupled to in-band radiation via a symmetric planar orthomode transducer (OMT). Each orthogonal linear polarization is coupled to a separate superconducting microstrip transmission line circuit. On-chip filtering is employed to both reject out-of-band radiation from the upper band edge to the gap frequency of the niobium superconductor, and to flexibly define the bandwidth for each TES to meet the requirements of the application. The microwave circuit is compatible with multi-chroic operation. Metalized silicon platelets are used to define the backshort for the waveguide probes. This micro-machined structure is also used to mitigate the coupling of out-of-band radiation to the microwave circuit. At 40 GHz, the detectors have a measured efficiency of 90%. In this paper, we describe the development of the 90 GHz detector arrays that will be demonstrated using the Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) ground-based telescope.