NIKA: A millimeter-wave kinetic inductance camera
By A. Monfardini, L. Swenson, A. Bideaud, F. Désert, S. Yates, A. Benoit, A. Baryshev, J. Baselmans, S. Doyle, B. Klein and 11 more. 2010
140 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Context. Current generation millimeter wavelength detectors suffer from scaling limits imposed by complex cryogenic readout electronics. These instruments typically employ multiplexing ratios well below a hundred. To achieve multiplexing ratios greater than a thousand, it is imperative to investigate technologies that intrinsically incorporate strong multiplexing. One possible solution is the kinetic inductance detector (KID). To assess the potential of this nascent technology, a prototype instrument optimized for the 2 mm atmospheric window was constructed. Known as the Neel IRAM KID Array (NIKA), it has recently been tested at the Institute for Millimetric Radio Astronomy (IRAM) 30-m telescope at Pico Veleta, Spain. Aims. There were four principle research objectives: to determine the practicality of developing a giant array instrument based on KIDs, to measure current in-situ pixel sensitivities, to identify limiting noise sources, and to image both calibration and scientificallyrelevant astronomical sources. Methods. The detectors consisted of arrays of high-quality superconducting resonators electromagnetically coupled to a transmission line and operated at ∼100 mK. The impedance of the resonators was modulated by incident radiation; two separate arrays were tested to evaluate the efficiency of two unique optical-coupling strategies. The first array consisted of lumped element kinetic inductance detectors (LEKIDs), which have a fully planar design properly shaped to enable direct absorbtion. The second array consisted of antenna-coupled KIDs with individual sapphire microlenses aligned with planar slot antennas. Both detectors utilized a single transmission line along with suitable room-temperature digital electronics for continuous readout. Results. NIKA was successfully tested in October 2009, performing in line with expectations. The measurement resulted in the imaging of a number of sources, including planets, quasars, and galaxies. The images for Mars, radio star MWC349, quasar 3C345, and galaxy M 87 are presented. From these results, the optical NEP was calculated to be around 1×10 −15 W/Hz 1/2 . A factor of 10 improvement is expected to be readily feasible by improvements in the detector materials and reduction of performance-degrading spurious radiation.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/721d5c4dfcd57ac5955253d51d5f5304ca20b973
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
Citations in the corpus
- The NIKA2 large-field-of-view millimetre continuum camera for the 30 m IRAM telescope (2017, background): “…pathfinder NIKA instrument at the IRAM 30-meters telescope, equipped with 356 pixels split over two arrays, has demonstrated state-of-the art performance in terms of sensitivity, stability and dynamic range (Monfardini et al. 2010, Monfardini et al. 2011, Catalano et al. 2014, Adam et al. 2014).”
- A DUAL-BAND MILLIMETER-WAVE KINETIC INDUCTANCE CAMERA FOR THE IRAM 30 m TELESCOPE (2011, methodology): “The detectors noise is relatively flat, in contrast with previous measurements where aNθ, f ∝ f −0.5 dependence was observed (Monfardini et al. 2010, Gao et al. 2007).”
- ARCONS: A 2024 Pixel Optical through Near-IR Cryogenic Imaging Spectrophotometer (2013, background): “…Inductance Detectors, or MKIDs (Day et al. 2003; Mazin et al. 2012), are a newer cryogenic detector technology that has proven important for astrophysics (Schlaerth et al. 2010; Monfardini et al. 2010) due to their sensitivity and the ease with which they can be multiplexed into large arrays.”