Advanced ACTPol Low Frequency Array: Readout and Characterization of Prototype 27 and 39 GHz Transition Edge Sensors

TL;DR

This paper reports on the design, characterization, and testing of prototype low frequency transition edge sensors for the AdvACT experiment, aiming to optimize detector performance for CMB observations at 27 and 39 GHz.

Contribution

It introduces the first low frequency prototype TES detectors for AdvACT, including their design, characterization results, and modifications to the readout architecture.

Findings

Prototype TES detectors achieved target saturation power and critical temperature.

Thermal conductance and time constants were measured and optimized.

Readout architecture was successfully modified for low frequency detectors.

Abstract

Advanced ACTPol (AdvACT) is a third generation polarization upgrade to the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, designed to observe the cosmic microwave background (CMB). AdvACT expands on the 90 and 150 GHz transition edge sensor (TES) bolometer arrays of the ACT Polarimeter (ACTPol), adding both high frequency (HF, 150/230 GHz) and low frequency (LF, 27/39 GHz) multichroic arrays. The addition of the high and low frequency detectors allows for the characterization of synchrotron and spinning dust emission at the low frequencies and foreground emission from galactic dust and dusty star forming galaxies at the high frequencies. The increased spectral coverage of AdvACT will enable a wide range of CMB science, such as improving constraints on dark energy, the sum of the neutrino masses, and the existence of primordial gravitational waves. The LF array will be the final AdvACT array, replacing one of the MF arrays for a single season. Prior to the fabrication of the final LF detector array, we designed and characterized prototype TES bolometers. Detector geometries in these prototypes are varied in order to inform and optimize the bolometer designs for the LF array, which requires significantly lower noise levels and saturation powers (as low as ${\sim}1$ pW) than the higher frequency detectors. Here we present results from tests of the first LF prototype TES detectors for AdvACT, including measurements of the saturation power, critical temperature, thermal conductance and time constants. We also describe the modifications to the time-division SQUID readout architecture compared to the MF and HF arrays.