High-bandwidth frequency domain multiplexed readout of transition-edge sensors for neutrinoless double beta decay searches

TL;DR

This paper presents a high-bandwidth frequency domain multiplexed readout system for transition-edge sensors, enabling faster and more efficient data acquisition for next-generation neutrinoless double-beta decay experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel digital fMux readout system operating at 156 kHz, significantly faster than previous versions, suitable for large-scale cryogenic detector arrays.

Findings

Achieved a 156 kHz sampling rate for TES readout

Demonstrated multiplexing of ten superconducting resonators

Integrated FPGA-based digital signal processing for low-latency feedback

Abstract

The next-generation of cryogenic neutrinoless double-beta decay experiments require increasingly fast readout in order to improve background discrimination. These experiments, operated as cryogenic calorimeters at $\sim$10 mK, are usually read out by high-impedance neutron transmutation doped (NTD) thermistors, which provide good energy resolution, but are limited by $\sim$1 ms response times. Superconducting detectors, such as transition-edge sensors (TESs) with a time resolution of $\sim$100 $\mu$s, offer superior timing performance over NTD semiconductor bolometers. To make this technology viable for an application to a thousand or more channels, multiplexed readout is necessary in order to minimize the thermal load and radioactive contamination induced by the readout. Frequency-domain multiplexing readout (fMux) for TESs, previously developed at Berkeley Lab and McGill University, is currently in use for mm-wave telescopes with detector sampling rates in the order of 100 Hz. We demonstrate a new readout system, based on the McGill/Berkeley digital fMux readout, to satisfy the higher bandwidth and noise requirements of the next generation of TES-instrumented cryogenic calorimeters. The new readout samples detectors at 156 kHz, three orders of magnitude faster than its cosmology-oriented predecessor. Each multiplexing readout module comprises ten superconducting resonators in the MHz range and a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID), interfaced to high-bandwidth field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based electronics for digital signal processing and low-latency feedback.