ARCONS: a step towards the 'ultimate detector' for optical/IR astronomy

October 20, 2011

When: October 20, 2011 4:00PM

UCSB

In this talk I will describe our ongoing work in the development of Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) for optical and infra-red astronomy. These super-conducting devices represent an important step towards the development of the 'ultimate detector'; one that can measure the position, energy and arrival time of a photon. I will describe the operating principles of the devices and their current status. I will describe ARCONS, the first MKID-based optical/IR instrument and the results of our recent commissioning run at the Palomar observatory. Finally, I will discuss the future promise of the technology, focussing on its use in the field of time domain astrophysics.

Kieran O'Brien

I gained my PhD from the University of St Andrews, UK in 2000. My thesis entitled 'X-ray and optical observations of X-ray Binaries' pioneered the technique of echo-tomography in X-ray Binaries. After a short post-doc at the University of Amsterdam, I joined ESO in 2002. I spent seven years as an Operations Staff Astronomer at the VLT in Chile. I was Instrument Scientist for the FORS spectrographs and deputy group leader of the Calibration group. During my time there I furthered my interest in the development of high-speed instrumentation working with ULTRACAM and ULTRASPEC. I joined UCSB in 2009 as an Associate Project Scientist in the group of Ben Mazin, working on the development of MKIDs for optical/IR astronomy. I continue to publish in the field of rapid correlated variability in X-ray binaries.

Seminar