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SuperSpec: Device Characterization and Preparation for Telescope Deployment and Observations

Presentation #317.01 in the session “Ground Based and Airborne Instrumentation”.

Published onJun 18, 2021
SuperSpec: Device Characterization and Preparation for Telescope Deployment and Observations

SuperSpec is an integrated, on-chip spectrometer for millimeter and sub-millimeter astronomy, intended to pave the way for large-scale, multi-beam spectrometer instruments. SuperSpec is demonstrating a three beam, dual-polarization instrument (6 devices total) on the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT), a 50 m telescope on Volcan Sierra Negra in Mexico. SuperSpec provides moderate resolution (R ∼ 270) in the 1 mm atmospheric window (200–300 GHz) with lithographically patterned filterbank on a 3.5 by 5.5 cm chip. The filterbank is implemented in niobium, fed by a lensed antenna, and an extremely low-volume (2.6 µm3 ) titanium nitride lumped element kinetic inductance detectors (LEKIDs) as the sensor. The instrument is cooled with three-stage helium-10 sorption system and read out with a ROACH-2 multitone system based on BLAST-TNG. The small size of the spectrometer and inherent multiplexity of the kinetic inductance detectors (KIDs) will allow the future use of SuperSpec in larger, multi-pixel/multi-object spectrometers far beyond the three pixel spectrometer being demonstrated currently. SuperSpec will be observing CO, [CII], and [NII] emission lines in distant galaxies, focusing on the [CII] line of z ∼ 4 − 8 galaxies to observe star formation in the early universe. We present the characterization and expected performance on-sky in the first SuperSpec deployment.

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