(ORDO NEWS) — To study how stars and planets are born, we must look at stellar cradles hidden in cool dust clouds.
Telescopes in the far infrared are able to penetrate these clouds. Usually, niobium nitride bolometers are used as detectors, despite their low operating temperature of 4 K (-269°C).
Yuner Gan, together with a team of scientists from SRON, TU Delft, Chalmers University and RUG, have developed a new type of magnesium diboride bolometer with an operating temperature of 20 K or higher.
This can significantly reduce the cost, complexity, weight and volume of space instruments.
Conventional hot electron bolometers based on superconducting niobium nitride (NbN)(HEB) are by far the most sensitive heterodyne detectors for high-resolution spectroscopy at far infrared frequencies.
They are able to measure in great detail not only the intensity, but also the frequency.
Heterodyne detectors have been successfully used in balloon and space telescopes and are candidates for use in future missions.
Ground-based telescopes cannot see far infrared radiation because it is blocked by the earth’s atmosphere.
One disadvantage of such detectors is their bandwidth. Another limitation is related to the low operating temperature.
Cooling down to 4 Kelvin with either a liquid helium vessel or a mechanical impulse tube is undesirable for a space observatory given mass, volume, electrical power and cost limitations.
Yuner Gan and her colleagues have now developed a far-infrared HEB detector based on a new superconducting material, magnesium diboride (MgB2), which has a relatively high critical temperature of 39 K.
This allows them to achieve higher operating temperatures of 20 K or more. . They also demonstrated that the new HEBs have promising sensitivity and significantly increased bandwidth.
—
Online:
Contact us: [email protected]
Our Standards, Terms of Use: Standard Terms And Conditions.