The Simons Observatory: Studies of Detector Yield and Readout Noise From the First Large-Scale Deployment of Microwave Multiplexing at the Large Aperture Telescope

TL;DR

The paper reports on the successful deployment and commissioning of microwave multiplexing readout systems for the large-scale detector array of the Simons Observatory, demonstrating promising yield and noise performance in early testing.

Contribution

It presents the first large-scale deployment of microwave multiplexing technology for superconducting sensors in a major cosmology experiment.

Findings

Significant fraction of deployed systems meet baseline specifications

Readout noise levels are within expected ranges

Detector yield is promising in early commissioning phase

Abstract

The Simons Observatory is a new ground-based cosmic microwave background experiment, which is currently being commissioned in Chile's Atacama Desert. During its survey, the observatory's small aperture telescopes will map 10% of the sky in bands centered at frequencies ranging from 27 to 280 GHz to constrain cosmic inflation models, and its large aperture telescope will map 40% of the sky in the same bands to constrain cosmological parameters and use weak lensing to study large-scale structure. To achieve these science goals, the Simons Observatory is deploying these telescopes' receivers with 60,000 state-of-the-art superconducting transition-edge sensor bolometers for its first five year survey. Reading out this unprecedented number of cryogenic sensors, however, required the development of a novel readout system. The SMuRF electronics were developed to enable high-density readout of superconducting sensors using cryogenic microwave SQUID multiplexing technology. The commissioning of the SMuRF systems at the Simons Observatory is the largest deployment to date of microwave multiplexing technology for transition-edge sensors. In this paper, we show that a significant fraction of the systems deployed so far to the Simons Observatory's large aperture telescope meet baseline specifications for detector yield and readout noise in this early phase of commissioning.