Design and Assembly of SPT-3G Cold Readout Hardware

Abstract

The third-generation upgrade to the receiver on the South Pole Telescope, SPT-3G, was installed at the South Pole during the 2016–2017 austral summer to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background. Increasing the number of detectors by a factor of 10 to ∼16,000 ∼16,000 required the multiplexing factor to increase to 68 and the bandwidth of the frequency-division readout electronics to span 1.6–5.2 MHz. This increase necessitates low-thermal conductance, low-inductance cryogenic wiring. Our cold readout system consists of planar thin-film aluminum inductive–capacitive resonators, wired in series with the detectors, summed together, and connected to 4K SQUIDs by 10−μm 10−μm -thick niobium–titanium (NbTi) broadside-coupled striplines. Here, we present an overview of the cold readout electronics for SPT-3G, including assembly details and characterization of electrical and thermal properties of the system. We report, for the NbTi striplines, values of R≤10 −4 Ω R≤10−4Ω , L=21±1 nH L=21±1 nH , and C=1.47±.02 nF C=1.47±.02 nF . Additionally, the striplines’ thermal conductivity is described by kA=6.0±0.3 T 0.92±0.04 μW mm K −1 kA=6.0±0.3 T0.92±0.04 μW mm K−1 . Finally, we provide projections for cross talk induced by parasitic impedances from the stripline and find that the median value of percentage cross talk from leakage current is 0.22 and 0.09% 0.09% from wiring impedance.