Cold-electron bolometers for future mm and sub-mm sky surveys

Paper i proceeding, 2014

Future sky surveys in the mm/sub-mm range, like the forthcoming balloon-borne missions LSPE, OLIMPO, SPIDER etc., will need detectors insensitive to cosmic rays (CRs) and with a NEP of the order of 10-17 ¥ 10-18 W/sqrt(Hz). The Cold-Electron Bolometers (CEBs) technology is promising, having the required proper-ties, since the absorber volume is extremely small and the electron system of the absorber is thermally insulated from the phonon system. We have developed an experimental setup to test the optical performance and the CRs insensitivity of CEBs, with the target of integrating them in the OLIMPO and LSPE focal planes.