Sub-Kelvin cooling for two kilopixel bolometer arrays in the PIPER receiver.

The Primordial Inflation Polarization Explorer (PIPER) is a balloon-borne telescope mission to search for inflationary gravitational waves from the early universe. PIPER employs two 32 × 40 arrays of superconducting transition-edge sensors, which operate at 100 mK. An open bucket Dewar of liquid helium maintains the receiver and telescope optics at 1.7 K. We describe the thermal design of the receiver and sub-Kelvin cooling with a continuous adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator (CADR). The CADR operates between 70 and 130 mK and provides ≈10 µW cooling power at 100 mK, nearly five times the loading of the two detector assemblies. We describe electronics and software to robustly control the CADR, overall CADR performance in flightlike integrated receiver testing, and practical considerations for implementation in the balloon float environment.

Variable-delay polarization modulators for cryogenic millimeter-wave applications.

We describe the design, construction, and initial validation of the variable-delay polarization modulator (VPM) designed for the PIPER cosmic microwave background polarimeter. The VPM modulates between linear and circular polarization by introducing a variable phase delay between orthogonal linear polarizations. Each VPM has a diameter of 39 cm and is engineered to operate in a cryogenic environment (1.5 K). We describe the mechanical design and performance of the kinematic double-blade flexure and drive mechanism along with the construction of the high precision wire grid polarizers.

Optical performance of frequency-selective bolometers.

Frequency-selective bolometers (FSBs) are a new type of detector for millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths that are transparent to all but a narrow range of frequencies as set by characteristics of the absorber itself. Therefore stacks of FSBs tuned to different frequencies provide a low-loss compact method for utilizing a large fraction of the light collected by a telescope. Tests of prototype FSBs indicate that the absorption spectra are well predicted by models, that peak absolute absorption efficiencies of the order of 50% are attainable, and that their out-of-band transmission is high.

Frequency selective bolometers.

We propose a concept for radiometry in the millimeter, the submillimeter, and the far-IR spectral regions, the frequency selective bolometer (FSB). This system uses a bolometer as a coupled element of a tuned quasi-optical interference filter in which the absorption, the transmission, and the reflection characteristics of the filter depend on the frequency in a controlled manner. Several FSB's can be cascaded within a straight light pipe to produce a high-efficiency, compact, multiband radiometer. A prototype design is presented together with its anticipated performance based on a one-dimensional transmission-line model. Instruments based on FSB technology should have several advantages over current multiband bolometric radiometers including smaller and more compact cryogenic optics, reduced demands on cryostat size and weight, high coupling efficiency, minimum constraints on the geometry in the focal plane. An FSB system can be configured as a multiband, close-packed focal-plane array, permitting efficient use of the throughput of a telescope.