Category: Technologie

A Dutch consortium of SRON, TU Delft, NOVA and Veldlaser receives NSO funding to further develop PRIMA’s far-infrared detector. PRIMA is one of the two remaining candidates to become NASA’s Probe mission. SRON’s role is to develop the Kinetic Inductance Detectors (KIDs) for the PRIMAger instrument. The consortium will use the funding to push the detectors to a higher level. In space terms: to TRL-6.

SRON researcher Luciano Gottardi has received an ENW-XS grant from NWO to read out a thousand X-ray detectors simultaneously with a single amplifier. The new readout follows the same principle as KIDs, which are already used to detect far-infrared and visible light particles.

Researchers at SRON and TU Delft have made bolometer detectors thirty percent more sensitive. Bolometers form the heart of terahertz spectrometers that can distinguish colors up to one-millionth of their wavelength. This is needed to observe astrophysical processes such as the birth of stars and planets from gas and dust clouds. The enhancement should cut the time in half that it takes a space telescope to take a spectrum.

Researchers at TU Delft, SRON and LongWave Photonics LLC have created a centimeter-sized, lightweight terahertz spectrometer. Current spectrometers are half a meter in size and much heavier. Weight and size play a large role since terahertz radiation is only detectable from space. Publication in Laser & Photonics Reviews.

David Doelman has been awarded a Veni grant for his research on advanced optical technologies for the next generation of space telescopes. These telescopes aim to directly study the light from Earth-like planets orbiting nearby stars, in search of evidence of liquid water and life.

SRON researcher Pieter de Visser has received an ENW-M1 grant from NWO to develop detectors that catch individual light particles from planets outside our solar system. Planets mainly emit low-energy light, such as infrared radiation, which is particularly difficult to detect. De Visser is developing his MKID detectors for infrared wavelengths with ESA’s candidate space mission LIFE in mind.

SRON scientists have demonstrated the potential of Transition Edge Sensors (TES) for detecting axions. These hypothetical particles have never been observed, perhaps due to the weak signals they produce. Evidence for their existence could point to the origin of dark matter.

To study how stars and planets are born we have to look at star cradles hidden in cool clouds of dust. Far-infrared telescopes are able to pierce through those clouds. Conventionally, niobium nitride bolometers are used as the detectors, despite their low operating temperature of 4 Kelvin (-269° Celsius). Now Yuner Gan (SRON/RUG), together with a team of scientists at SRON, TU Delft, Chalmers University and RUG, has developed a new type of bolometer, made of magnesium diboride, with an operating temperature of 20 Kelvin or above. This can significantly reduce the cost, complexity, weight and volume of the space instruments. Publication on 17 February in Journal of Applied Physics.

Compared to most wavelengths, astronomy has a blind spot on the far-infrared part of the spectrum. A far-infrared space telescope experiences noise from its own mirror unless it is cooled to a few degrees above absolute zero. In the absence of sensitive detectors, such an expensive observatory has not yet been built, which in turn has slowed down the development of detectors. In 2004, SRON decided to break this vicious circle and invest in the development of Kinetic Inductance Detectors (KIDs). These KIDs now achieve a sensitivity that allows them to detect even the background radiation of the Universe.

Scientists develop superconducting detectors (MKIDs) to discern the spectrum of exoplanets from their faint glow. Now researchers from SRON and TU Delft see a hundred times lower noise than previously thought. It provides a new fundamental physics insight: the relationship between the number of quasi particles and their lifetime vanishes. Publication in Physical Review B.

Receivers combining a superconducting hot electron bolometer (HEB) with a reference oscillator are the work horses of supra-terahertz astronomy, observing for example star formation and galaxy evolution. Until now, mainly niobium nitride HEBs – that have to be operated at low temperatures of 4 Kelvin – have been selected for space and balloon borne telescopes. A team of scientists at SRON, TU Delft, Chalmers University and RUG have now demonstrated a HEB based on magnesium diboride, a new superconducting material, which not only can simultaneously detect more spectral lines, but can also be operated around 20 Kelvin. The latter can significantly reduce the cost, weight, volume, and required electrical power of space instruments. Publication in Applied Physics Letters.

SRON scientists have managed to simultaneously read out the signal of 37 TES pixels at a resolution of 2.2 eV for X-rays (6 keV). It is the first time that a simultaneous readout fulfills the requirements for future space telescopes at the level of Athena in terms of both number of pixels and energy resolution. In 2020, SRON already set a world record of 1.3 eV energy resolution for X-rays with TES, but only with a single pixel readout.

Scientists at SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research are developing a detection technique (TES) that measures the energy of individual photons, for example in X-rays from the distant universe. Until now, it was assumed that the wiring on the detector chip brings along an inherent whimsicality in accuracy. The research team has now discovered that there is room for improvement after all. Publication in Physical Review Applied.

Scientists have discovered that electron pairs can stay together even when the superconducting state has collapsed. They observed the phenomenon in titanium nitride until up to double the critical temperature. In conventional superconductors, electron pairs and superconductivity go hand in hand. Titanium nitride is used for its superconductive properties in space research for detecting exoplanets. Publication in Science on 29 October.

Scientist use superconducting detectors (MKIDs) to capture single photons coming from exoplanets. MKIDs constantly monitor their own kinetic inductance, which changes proportionally to the energy of an incoming photon. SRON researchers have now more than doubled their spectral resolution by re-trapping most of the leaked energy. Publication in Physical Review Applied.

GUSTO, NASA’s stratospheric balloon observatory, will bring the Dutch multi-pixel camera system of SRON and TU Delft to the edge of space. It will perform a large-scale observation of the spectral lines from ionized atoms between the stars of the Milky Way. As an extra hardware contribution, SRON delivers a Fourier phase grating. The technique behind it is now published in Optics Express. 

After carefully observing dim objects in the night sky, you don’t want to waste any precious signal on its way from the telescope dish to the detector. But in the case of far-infrared astronomy, it’s not as easy as it sounds to transport the signal efficiently. In fact, it’s even an endeavor to measure the exact amount of signal that gets lost. Scientists from SRON and TU Delft have now found a new, easier way to determine the signal loss. In the process they designed a signal-carrying microstrip for the DESHIMA-2 instrument that loses only 1 in 4,900 photons. Publication in Physical Review Applied.

SRON scientists have developed five new pixel designs for X-ray telescopes. They have now for the first time reached the same energy resolution as conventional square pixels. The team determined for each design its pros and cons, depending on the goal of an X-ray space mission. Publication in Journal of Applied Physics.

In 2031, ESA launches its new X-ray space telescope Athena. SRON plays a large role in building one of its two instruments, the X-IFU spectrometer, by producing the camera plus the back-up detectors. SRON scientists have now successfully developed detectors that are optimized for a readout based on a special system called Frequency Domain Multiplexing. They set a new world-record energy resolution at 6 keV of 1.3 eV.

Far-infrared telescopes mix the incoming light from space with their own far-infrared laser to maximize the spectral resolution. But the currently available lasers can’t produce a radiation signal with an ideal shape—a Gaussian beam. Yuner Gan, a PhD student at SRON and RUG, has now developed a beam cleaning device that reshapes an original laser beam into a Gaussian beam. Publication in Optics Express.

Over the years, SRON has developed increasingly sensitive Transition Edge Sensors (TES) for space missions such as SPICA and Athena. One of those TES detector arrays, developed as backup X-ray microcalorimeters for Athena, has now played a vital role to demonstrate a new readout technology developed at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Japan. This technology is called low-noise microwave SQUIDs multiplexed readout. The research results are published in Applied Physics Letters.