Development of a Low EMI and Acoustic Background Characterization Testbed for Ultra-low Noise Transition Edge Sensor Bolometers

Ultra-low noise bolometers seek to solve a number of current problems in the sensitive detection of optical thru microwave photons, ranging from background-limited astronomical detectors in Far Infrared (FIR), to the characterization and interconnection of qubits for quantum computation (QC). As advances are made in the design and fabrication of ultra-low noise bolometers, the need for platforms capable of characterizing these devices and the materials from which they are made rises. The bolometers required for these applications have extremely high sensitivities of order 10~zW/$Hz^{1/2}$, and are therefore particularly susceptible to undesired deposited thermal power. In particular the development of transition edge sensor (TES) bolometers, which have strongly saturating characteristics and are vibrationally sensitive, places strict requirements on such testbeds. Herein, we propose to develop, at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) within the Detector Systems Branch, a purpose-built cryogenic testbed capable of characterizing these ultra-sensitive detectors. The system will be developed to be vibrationally isolated from it's environment, capable of operating with no mechanical input for periods of up to 2 hours and to be electromagnetically shielded to enable the use of sensitive superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) readout. We then propose to use that system to study a number of ultra-low noise TES bolometers under development at GSFC as well as to measure key properties of the films from which they are fabricated using SQUID-based Johnson noise thermometry.

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