Thermal Design of a Transition-Edge Sensor Bolometer Array: Conductance, Noise-Equivalent Power and Saturation Margin

This paper presents a computed design for a TES bolometer array intended for cryogenic detector arrays, with its performance, resource budgets and margins derived from stated assumptions rather than asserted. The headline results are: phonon-noise-equivalent power per pixel of 15.4 attowatt per root hertz; saturation power per pixel of 8.44 pW; ratio of saturation power to the stated optical load of 2.11 dimensionless; effective response time under electrothermal feedback of 0.153 ms; electrothermal loop gain of 28.1 dimensionless. Each figure was produced by the deposited computation from the inputs listed in the Methods, and the sensitivity of the conclusions to those inputs is examined in the Discussion. The design is a paper study: it is labelled, on its face and in this abstract, SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED, and no quantity reported here is a measurement of built hardware.