Large-area Reflective Infrared Filters for Millimeter/sub-mm Telescopes
Abstract
Ground-based millimeter and sub-millimeter telescopes are attempting to image the sky with ever-larger cryogenically-cooled bolometer arrays, but face challenges in mitigating the infrared loading accompanying large apertures. Absorptive infrared filters supported by mechanical coolers scale insufficiently with aperture size. Reflective metal-mesh filters placed behind the telescope window provide a scalable solution in principle, but have been limited by photolithography constraints to diameters under 300 mm. We present laser etching as an alternate technique to photolithography for fabrication of large-area reflective filters, and show results from lab tests of 500 mm-diameter filters. Filters with up to 700 mm diameter can be fabricated using laser etching with existing capability.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1407.5892,
title = {Large-area Reflective Infrared Filters for Millimeter/sub-mm Telescopes},
author = {Z. Ahmed and J. A. Grayson and K. L. Thompson and C. L. Kuo and G. Brooks and T. Pothoven},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1407.5892},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
6 pages, 5 figures. Presented at the 15th International Workshop on Low Temperature Detectors