In-flight performance of Spider's 280-GHz receivers

Shaw, Elle C., Ade, Peter A. R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5127-0401, Akers, Scott, Amiri, Mandana, Austermann, Jason, Beall, James, Becker, Daniel T., Benton, Steven J., Bergman, Amanda S., Bock, James J., Bond, John R., Bryan, Sean A., Chiang, H. Cynthia, Contaldi, Carlo R., Domagalski, Rachel S., Doré, Olivier, Duff, Shannon M., Duivenvoorden, Adri J., Eriksen, Hans K., Farhang, Marzeih, Filippini, Jeffrey P., Fissel, Laura M., Fraisse, Aurelien A., Freese, Katherine, Galloway, Mathew, Gambrel, Anne E., Gandilo, Natalie N., Ganga, Kenneth, Gibbs, Sho M., Gourapura, Suren, Grigorian, Arpi, Gualtieri, Ricardo, Gudmundsson, Jón E., Halpern, Mark, Hartley, John, Hasselfield, Matthew, Hilton, Gene, Holmes, Warren, Hristov, Viktor V., Huang, Zhiqi, Hubmayr, Johannes, Irwin, Kent D., Jones, William C., Kahn, Asad, Kermish, Zigmund D., King, Cesiley, Kuo, Calvin L., Lennox, Amber R., Leung, Jason S.-Y., Li, Steven, Luu, Thuy Vy T., Mason, Peter V., May, Jared, Megerian, Krikor, Moncelsi, Lorenzo, Morford, Thomas A., Nagy, Johanna M., Nie, Rong, Netterfield, Calvin B., Nolta, Michael, Osherson, Benjamin, Padilla, Ivan L., Rahlin, Alexandra S., Redmond, Susan, Reintsema, Carl, Romualdez, L. Javier, Ruhl, John E., Runyan, Marcus C., Shariff, Jamil A., Shiu, Corwin, Soler, Juan D., Song, Xue, Tartakovsky, Simon, Thommesen, Harald, Trangsrud, Amy, Tucker, Carole ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1851-3918, Turner, Anthony D., Ullom, Joel, van der List, Joseph F., Van Lanen, Jeff, Vissers, Michael R., Weber, Alexis C., Wehus, Ingunn K., Wen, Shyang, Wiebe, Donald V. and Young, Edward Y. 2024. In-flight performance of Spider's 280-GHz receivers. Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems 10 (04) , 044012. 10.1117/1.JATIS.10.4.044012

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Abstract

Spider is a balloon-borne instrument designed to map the cosmic microwave background at degree-angular scales in the presence of Galactic foregrounds. Spider has mapped a large sky area in the Southern Hemisphere using more than 2000 transition-edge sensors (TESs) during two NASA Long Duration Balloon flights above the Antarctic continent. During its first flight in January 2015, Spider was observed in the 95- and 150-GHz frequency bands, setting constraints on the B-mode signature of primordial gravitational waves. Its second flight in the 2022–2023 season added new receivers at 280 GHz, each using an array of TESs coupled to the sky through feedhorns formed from stacks of silicon wafers. These receivers are optimized to produce deep maps of polarized Galactic dust emission over a large sky area, providing a unique data set with lasting value to the field. We describe the instrument’s performance during Spider’s second flight, focusing on the performance of the 280-GHz receivers. We include details on the flight, in-band optical loading at float, and an early analysis of detector noise.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Physics and Astronomy
Publisher:	Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers
ISSN:	2329-4124
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	17 February 2025
Date of Acceptance:	6 December 2024
Last Modified:	18 Feb 2025 10:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/176246

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