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University of Lethbridge

A cryogenic detector for submillimetre astronomy

Abstract

Over the last several years, a submillimetre astronomical polarizing Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) has been developed for use at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) located atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii. A new liquid3 He cooled dual polarization detector system has been carefully designed for use with this FTS to eliminate noise problems encountered with UKT14, the JCMT facility bolometric detector. The objective of this thesis is to evaluate and optimize the performance of the new detector system. The design of the detector system is discussed, and the noise performance of the system is evaluated. The system performance is determined from photmetric, classical B-I, and spectroscopic measurements. Compared to UKT14, the intrinsic bolometer noise is reduced by a factor of - 2. More importantly, the spectral signal to noise ratio is improved by a factor of - 10 due to the elimination of electrical pickup and microphone noise in the detector signal.

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Authors
  • Gom, Bradley Gustav
  • University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Arts and Science

Subjects

dc:subject × 4

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Identifier
hdl:10133/102
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:opus.uleth.ca:10133/102

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
University of Lethbridge
Base URL
opus.uleth.ca/server/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-27
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Gom, Bradley Gustav; University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Arts and Science. A cryogenic detector for submillimetre astronomy. 1999.