EBEX is a balloon-borne telescope designed to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation. During its eleven day science flight in the Austral Summer of 2012, it operated 955 spider-web transition edge sensor (TES) bolometers separated into bands at 150, 250 and 410 GHz. This is the first time that an array of TES bolometers has been used on a balloon platform to conduct science observations. Polarization sensitivity was provided by a wire grid and continuously rotating half-wave plate. The balloon implementation of the bolometer array and readout electronics presented unique development requirements. Here we present an outline of the readout system, the remote tuning of the bolometers and Superconducting QUantum Interference Device (SQUID) amplifiers, and preliminary current noise of the bolometer array and readout system.
@article{arxiv.1407.6894,
title = {The performance of the bolometer array and readout system during the 2012/2013 flight of the E and B experiment (EBEX)},
author = {Kevin MacDermid and Asad M. Aboobaker and Peter Ade and Francois Aubin and Carlo Baccigalupi and Kevin Bandura and Chaoyun Bao and Julian Borrill and Daniel Chapman and Joy Didier and Matt Dobbs and Julien Grain and Will Grainger and Shaul Hanany and Kyle Helson and Seth Hillbrand and Gene Hilton and Hannes Hubmayr and Kent Irwin and Bradley Johnson and Andrew Jaffe and Terry Jones and Ted Kisner and Jeff Klein and Andrei Korotkov and Adrian Lee and Lorne Levinson and Michele Limon and Amber Miller and Michael Milligan and Enzo Pascale and Kate Raach and Britt Reichborn-Kjennerud and Carl Reintsema and Ilan Sagiv and Graeme Smecher and Radek Stompor and Matthieu Tristram and Greg Tucker and Ben Westbrook and Kyle Zilic},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1407.6894},
year = {2015}
}