A microwave kinetic inductance camera for sub/millimeter astrophysics
2008
The MKID Camera is a millimeter/submillimeter instrument being built for astronomical observations from the Caltech
Submillimeter Observatory. It utilizes microwave kinetic inductance detectors, which are rapidly achieving near-BLIP
sensitivity for ground-based observations, and a software-defined radio readout technique for elegant multiplexing of a
large number of detectors. The Camera will have 592 pixels distributed over 16 tiles in the focal plane, with four colors
per pixel matched to the 750 μm, 850 μm, and 1.0 - 1.5 mm (split in two) atmospheric transmission windows. As a
precursor to building the full-up camera and to enable ongoing detector testing, we have built a DemoCam comprised of
a 16-pixel MKID array with which we have made preliminary astronomical observations. These observations
demonstrate the viability of MKIDs for submillimeter astronomy, provide insight into systematic design issues that must
be considered for MKID-based instruments, and they are the first astronomical observations with antenna-coupled
superconducting detectors. In this paper, we describe the basic systems and specifications of the MKID Camera, we
describe our DemoCam observations, and we comment on the status of submillimeter MKID sensitivities.
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