Noise-free Cryogenic Cooling Systems

Future progress in astrophysics will be driven by continued advancement in the sensitivity of detectors. From far-infrared through x-rays, the most sensitive detectors are extremely low temperature superconducting devices. However, the required cooling systems do produce vibration, which can add jitter. Some coolers are inherently quieter. Indeed, a cryocooler was installed on HST with no measurable degradation of image quality. However, certain future objectives will need orders of magnitude lower levels of vibration. Perhaps the most compelling is the quest to image and characterize earth-like exoplanets. A mission targeting these will need unprecedented optical quality, yet be capable of detecting extremely weak signals.

We will investigate effectively noise-free cooling chain to enable the use of deep-subKelvin detectors on missions with extraordinarily low vibration limits. While the results will be applicable to a wide range of instruments with extremely low vibration requirements, we will focus on the accommodation of an energy resolving detector instrument on the LUVOIR mission, one of the 4 candidate flagship mission studies for the 2020 Astrophysics Decadal Survey. Several cryocooler configurations will be studied. Key issues will be the elimination of noise generation in flow lines and heat exchangers, minimization of vibration transmission across the spacecraft-to-telescope transition region, and the feasibility of highly effective vibration isolation systems.

A hurdle for the development of ultra-low noise cryogenic systems, and a clear technology gap, is the lack of instrumentation capable of measuring accelerations with sufficient sensitivity in a low temperature environment. As a secondary task, we will develop techniques for high sensitivity cryogenic vibration measurement.

Success in this work will open up the possibility for advanced instruments with unprecedented capabilities. For the particular example of missions such as LUVOIR, demonstrating the feasibility of cooling systems with near-zero vibration enables the use of energy resolving photon detectors for characterizing exoplanet atmospheres. Other cryogenic instruments with extremely low vibration requirements include gravity gradiometers for high-resolution planetary gravity mapping.

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