In-Flight Performance of Spider's 280 GHz Receivers
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 observed in the 95 GHz 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.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2408.10444,
title = {In-Flight Performance of Spider's 280 GHz Receivers},
author = {Elle C. Shaw and P. A. R. Ade and S. Akers and M. Amiri and J. Austermann and J. Beall and D. T. Becker and S. J. Benton and A. S. Bergman and J. J. Bock and J. R. Bond and S. A. Bryan and H. C. Chiang and C. R. Contaldi and R. S. Domagalski and O. Doré and S. M. Duff and A. J. Duivenvoorden and H. K. Eriksen and M. Farhang and J. P. Filippini and L. M. Fissel and A. A. Fraisse and K. Freese and M. Galloway and A. E. Gambrel and N. N. Gandilo and K. Ganga and S. M. Gibbs and S. Gourapura and A. Grigorian and R. Gualtieri and J. E. Gudmundsson and M. Halpern and J. Hartley and M. Hasselfield and G. Hilton and W. Holmes and V. V. Hristov and Z. Huang and J. Hubmayr and K. D. Irwin and W. C. Jones and A. Kahn and Z. D. Kermish and C. King and C. L. Kuo and A. R. Lennox and J. S. -Y. Leung and S. Li and T. V. Luu and P. V. Mason and J. May and K. Megerian and L. Moncelsi and T. A. Morford and J. M. Nagy and R. Nie and C. B. Netterfield and M. Nolta and B. Osherson and I. L. Padilla and A. S. Rahlin and S. Redmond and C. Reintsema and L. J. Romualdez and J. E. Ruhl and M. C. Runyan and J. A. Shariff and C. Shiu and J. D. Soler and X. Song and S. Tartakovsky and H. Thommesen and A. Trangsrud and C. Tucker and R. S. Tucker and A. D. Turner and J. Ullom and J. F. van der List and J. Van Lanen and M. R. Vissers and A. C. Weber and I. K. Wehus and S. Wen and D. V. Wiebe and E. Y. Young},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.10444},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
20 pages, 11 figures, Author's version of the manuscript accepted for publication in Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (JATIS) in December 2024