Design Evolution of the Spiderweb TES Bolometer for Cosmology Applications

Abstract

Our group at UC Berkeley has produced the next generation of millimeter-wave spiderweb-absorber transition edge sensor (TES) bolometer technology, which was originally developed for the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment—Sunyaev Zel’dolvich (APEX-SZ) and South Pole Telescope (SPT) experiments. We will discuss the adaptation of this technology to a balloon-borne environment and to sub-millimeter wavelengths for the E and B Experiment (EBEX) and the Atacama Sub-millimeter Telescope Experiment (ASTE). Specifically, this proceedings will address the methods we used to increase the thermal contact between the TES and a heat capacity used to limit electrothermal bandwidth, increase the optical efficiency at sub-millimeter wavelengths by reducing the grid spacing of the spiderweb absorber, and reduce the saturation power of the bolometers by a factor of 4 compared to the lowest saturation power SPT bolometers by the altering the bolometer geometry.