Design a Personal Thermal Comfort Product for Bosch: To design a personalized energy efficient heating solution for the in-door environment

With the already happening governmental regulations(The Netherlands), an increase in consumer price of natural gas is noticeable. With COVID-19 and now the war in Ukraine energy resources are becoming increasingly expensive. 90 percent Dutch houses are heated with gas. Based on the energy consultant, gas supplies an average to 9769 kWh of energy...

Ultra High Kinetic Inductance Detectors

Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) are extremely sensitive radiation detectors based on superconducting resonators that can be combined in large arrays on a single readout line within a limited frequency bandwidth. This makes MKIDs ideal detectors for the ultimate far-infrared observatory: a future space-based actively cooled...

Ultra-low noise TES bolometer arrays for SAFARI instrument on SPICA

SRON is developing ultra-low noise Transition Edge Sensors (TESs) based on a superconducting Ti/Au bilayer on a suspended SiN island with SiN legs for the SAFARI instrument aboard the SPICA mission. We successfully fabricated TESs with very narrow (0.5-0.7 μm) and thin (0.25 μm) SiN legs on different sizes of SiN islands using deep...

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...

Distributed TES model for designing low noise bolometers approaching SAFARI instrument requirements

Transition edge sensors (TES) are the chosen detector technology for the SAFARI imaging spectrometer on the SPICA telescope. The TES are required to have an NEP of 2–3 × 10?19 W/? Hz to take full advantage of the cooled mirror. SRON has developed TiAu TES bolometers for the short wavelength band (30–60 ?m). The TES are on SiN membranes, in which...

Low-noise transition edge sensor (TES) for SAFARI instrument on SPICA

Phase locking of a 2.7 THz quantum cascade laser to a microwave reference

We demonstrate the phase locking of a 2.7 THz metal–metal waveguide quantum cascade laser (QCL) to an external microwave signal. The reference is the 15th harmonic, generated by a semiconductor superlattice nonlinear device, of a signal at 182 GHz, which itself is generated by a multiplier chain (x12) from a microwave synthesizer at ~15 GHz....

Terahertz generation from graphite

Generation of subpicosecond terahertz pulses is observed when graphite surfaces are illuminated with femtosecond near-infrared laser pulses. The nonlinear optical generation of THz pulses from graphite is unexpected since, in principle, the material possesses a centre of inversion symmetry. Experiments with highly oriented pyrolytic graphite...

TeraHertz imaging of hidden paint layers on canvas

We show terahertz reflection images of hidden paint layers in a painting on canvas and compare the results with X-ray Radiography and Infrared Reflectography. Our terahertz measurements show strong reflections from both the canvas/paint interface and from the raw umber/lead white interface, indicating sufficient refractive-index contrast. Our...

Development of transition edge superconducting bolometers for the SAFARI Far-Infrared spectrometer on the SPICA space-borne telescope

We describe the optimization of transition edge superconducting (TES) detectors for use in a far-infrared (FIR) Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS) mounted on a cryogenically cooled space-borne telescope (e.g. SPICA). The required noise equivalent power (NEP) of the detectors is approximately 10?19 W/ ?Hz in order to be lower than the photon...

The Herschel-Heterodyne instrument for the Far-Infrared (HIFI): Instrument and pre-launch testing.

This paper describes the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared (HIFI), to be launched onboard of ESA's Herschel Space Observatory, by 2008. It includes the first results from the instrument level tests. The instrument is designed to be electronically tuneable over a wide and continuous frequency range in the Far Infrared, with velocity...

Quasi-near field terahertz generation and detection

We describe a simple terahertz (THz) time domain spectrometer with a bandwidth extending up to 7.5 THz. We show that by keeping the generation and detection crystals close to each other a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) can be achieved without using lock-in detection and dry nitrogen flushing. The observed spectra show very good agreement with...

Surface plasmon quantum cascade lasers as terahertz local oscillators

We characterize a heterodyne receiver based on a surface-plasmon waveguide quantum cascade laser (QCL) emitting at 2.84 THz as a local oscillator, and an NbN hot electron bolometer as a mixer. We find that the envelope of the far-field pattern of the QCL is diffraction-limited and superimposed onto interference fringes, which are similar to...

Shape resonance omni-directional terahertz filters with near-unity transmittance

Terahertz transmission filters have been manufactured by perforating metal films with various geometric shapes using femtosecond laser machining. Two dimensional arrays of square, circular, rectangular, cshaped, and epsilon-shaped holes all support over 99% transmission at specific frequencies determined by geometric shape, symmetry,...

Influence of pump wavelength and crystal length on the phase matching of optical rectification

We present measurements on terahertz generation by optical rectification, in which both the thickness of the generation crystal and the wavelength of the generating optical pulse are varied. The difference between the group velocity at optical frequencies and the phase velocity at terahertz frequencies affects the time trace and spectrum of the...