Orateur
Description
Kinetic inductance detectors carry the promise of a truly scalable detector solution, providing a practical path to filling the large and densely populated focal planes envisioned for future far-infrared and millimeter-wave instruments. At the same time, this detector technology shows promise in meeting the ambitious sensitivity and dynamic range specifications required to achieve the next generation of imaging and spectroscopic science goals. At NIST, we have developed and fabricated a wide range of detector, optical coupling, and readout technologies to further advance the goals of a variety of current and future experiments. This has included recently deployed millimeter-wave arrays for the TolTEC polarimeter (1.1, 1.4, 2.0 mm bands; Wilson et al 2020), sub-millimeter arrays for BLAST-TNG (250, 350, 500 μm bands; Coppi et al 2020), and several experiments actively under development for the CCAT-Prime project ranging from 350–1100 μm (Vavagiakis et al 2018) and the BLAST Observatory (Lowe et al 2020). Beyond these projects, the detector and related technologies have continued to evolve, with improved capabilities and an expanded scope. Recently, significant advances have been made in detector materials, noise performance, channel yield, operational wavelength range, and RFSoC (radio frequency system-on-chip) based readout. Here I review the microwave kinetic inductance detector (MKID) development program at NIST, provide status updates for the TolTEC and CCAT-Prime projects, describe some of the latest technological advancements, and explore technological prospects of the future.
