µ-spec spectrometers for the EXCLAIM instrument

Mona Mirzaei; Emily M. Barrentine; Berhanu T. Bulcha; Giuseppe Cataldo; Jake A. Connors; Negar Ehsan; Thomas M. Essinger-Hileman; Larry A. Hess; Jonas W. Mugge-Durum; Omid Noroozian; Trevor M. Oxholm; Thomas R. Stevenson; Eric R. Switzer; Carolyn G. Volpert; Edward J. Wollack

doi:10.1117/12.2562446

15 December 2020 μ-spec spectrometers for the EXCLAIM instrument

Mona Mirzaei, Emily M. Barrentine, Berhanu T. Bulcha, Giuseppe Cataldo, Jake A. Connors, Negar Ehsan, Thomas M. Essinger-Hileman, Larry A. Hess, Jonas W. Mugge-Durum, Omid Noroozian, Trevor M. Oxholm, Thomas R. Stevenson, Eric R. Switzer, Carolyn G. Volpert, Edward J. Wollack

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 11453, Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy X; 114530M (2020) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2562446
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2020, Online Only

Abstract

The EXperiment for Cryogenic Large-aperture Intensity Mapping (EXCLAIM) is a cryogenic balloon-borne instrument that will map carbon monoxide and singly-ionized carbon emission lines across redshifts from 0 to 3.5, using an intensity mapping approach. EXCLAIM will broaden our understanding of these elemental and molecular gases, and the role they play in star formation processes across cosmic time scales. The focal plane of EXCLAIM's cryogenic telescope features six μ-Spec spectrometers. μ-Spec is a compact, integrated grating-analog spectrometer, which uses meandered superconducting niobium microstrip transmission lines on a single-crystal silicon dielectric to synthesize the grating. It features superconducting aluminum microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs), also in a microstrip architecture. The spectrometers for EXCLAIM couple to the telescope optics via a hybrid planar antenna coupled to a silicon lenslet. The spectrometers operate from 420{540 GHz with a resolving power R = λ/Δλ = 512, and employ an array of 355 MKIDs on each spectrometer. The spectrometer design targets a noise equivalent power (NEP) of 2 x 10^-18 W√ Hz (defined at the input to the main lobe of the spectrometer lenslet beam, within a 9° half width), enabled by the cryogenic telescope environment, the sensitive MKID detectors, and the low dielectric loss of single-crystal silicon. We report on these spectrometers under development for EXCLAIM, providing an overview of the spectrometer and component designs, the spectrometer fabrication process, fabrication developments since previous prototype demonstrations, and the current status of their development for the EXCLAIM mission.

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Mona Mirzaei, Emily M. Barrentine, Berhanu T. Bulcha, Giuseppe Cataldo, Jake A. Connors, Negar Ehsan, Thomas M. Essinger-Hileman, Larry A. Hess, Jonas W. Mugge-Durum, Omid Noroozian, Trevor M. Oxholm, Thomas R. Stevenson, Eric R. Switzer, Carolyn G. Volpert, and Edward J. Wollack "μ-spec spectrometers for the EXCLAIM instrument", Proc. SPIE 11453, Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy X, 114530M (15 December 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2562446

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