A number of critical active and passive components of optical links have been tested at 77 K or lower temperatures, demonstrating potential development of optical links operating inside the liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) detector cryostat. A ring oscillator, individual MOSFETs, and a high speed 16:1 serializer fabricated in a commercial 0.25-um silicon-on-sapphire CMOS technology continued to function from room temperature to 4.2 K, 15 K, and 77 K respectively. Three types of laser diodes lase from room temperature to 77 K. Optical fibers and optical connectors exhibited minute attenuation changes from room temperature to 77 K.
@article{arxiv.2202.05110,
title = {R&D Towards Cryogenic Optical Links},
author = {Mark Christiansen and Raphael Galea and Datao Gong and Suen Hou and David Lissauer and Chonghan Liu and Tiankuan Liu and Veljko Radeka and Pavel Rehak and John Sondericker and Ryszard Stroynowski and Da-Shung Su and Peter Takacs and Helio Takai and Valeri Tcherniatine and Ping-Kun Teng and Craig Thorn and Annie C. Xiang and Jingbo Ye and Bo Yu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.05110},
year = {2022}
}