The first section on my talk will be on my development of the analysis pipeline for the upcoming EXperiment for Cryogenic Large-Aperture Intensity Mapping (EXCLAIM), which is proposed to have its first flight in Fall 2024. EXCLAIM is a balloon-borne cryogenic telescope that will perform line intensity mapping to study star formation rate history, and galaxy evolution. Line intensity mapping is a novel technique that detects the sum of all sources emitting in a particular spectral line in a given pixel. These are 3-dimensional maps that probe emissions at different redshift slices simultaneously. EXCLAIM will be sensitive over the 420–540 GHz frequency range. The main resonance lines of interest are the singly ionized carbon ([CII] or C+) over the redshift range z = 2.5–3.5, and multiple transition lines of carbon monoxide (CO) over z ≤ 1 that will be both a science target and a foreground line for [CII]. The current observing plan includes a survey of a 100 deg^2 region in the Galactic plane, and a 320 deg^2 region outside the Galactic plane that coincides with Stripe−82. I will present my current work on the analysis pipeline which involves constructing line intensity maps from simulated time-ordered-data. My simulated maps will include signals from [CII], (CO) interloping lines, Milky Way Foregrounds, atmospheric effects, and numerous instrumental effects including white-noise, 1/f-noise, and beam convolution. I plan to perform mode cleaning using Single-Value-Decomposition to attempt to de-noise my simulated intensity maps and report on any [CII] signal loss that will need to be accounted for. This work will help form the foundation for cleaning/analyzing EXCLAIM data when available.
The second section of my talk will focus on my work on developing and fabricating a DC voltage-biased Josephson Junction Radiator (JJR) calibrator to be used as both in-flight internal calibrators and laboratory testbed devices for future orbital, and sub-orbital astrophysics missions like EXCLAIM. In theory, JJRs can serve as calibrators for superconducting, non-superconducting detectors, and heterodyne instrumentation/detection and therefore can be useful for a wide variety of experiments over the mm and sub-mm wavelength range. I initially plan to study the characteristics of the JJRs using kinetic inductance detectors (KIDs) that I will also be fabricating. I will fabricate both devices lithographically on the same chip. I will implement designs that the McDermott Quantum Computing group at UW-Madison have developed. Antennas will also be included in the device’s design with the purpose of coupling the radiation/calibration source to the instrument and the detector optics. One promising antenna design is the lenslet-coupled antenna, which is a lens formed from a combination of both a hemisphere and a dielectric extension integrated with a lithographed planar antenna. I plan to implement the sinuous lenslet-coupled antenna design, which is a log-periodic antenna.