Effect of magnetic fields on TiAu TES bolometers for the SAFARI instrument on the SPICA FIR telescope

At the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON) we are developing Transition Edge Sensors (TES) bolometers for the SAFARI Imaging Spectrometer on the SPICA telescope. With the current design of the SPICA telescope a background magnetic field of about a Gauss with fluctuations of a couple percent is expected. The effect of this external...

AC bias characterization of low noise bolometers for SAFARI using an open-loop frequency domain SQUID-based multiplexer operating between 1 and 5 MHz

SRON is developing the Frequency Domain Multiplexing (FDM) read-out and the ultra low NEP TES bolometers array for the infra-red spectrometer SAFARI on board of the Japanese space mission SPICA. The FDM prototype of the instrument requires critical and complex optimizations. For single pixel characterization under AC bias we are developing a...

Performance of a low-noise test facility for the SAFARI TES bolometer arrays

We have constructed a test facility for characterizing the focal plane arrays of SAFARI, the far-infrared imaging spectrometer for the SPICA satellite. SAFARI’s three bolometer arrays are populated with extremely sensitive (NEP ? 2 × 10?19 W/? Hz) transition edge sensors with a transition temperature close to 100 mK. The extreme sensitivity and...