Detector Technologies

A detector that measures light by the tiny rise in temperature it causes in an absorbing element — the standard way to detect the faint millimetre and submillimetre sky, including the cosmic microwave background. Cooled to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero; the South Pole Telescope's cameras use large bolometer arrays.

The charge-coupled device, the detector that transformed optical astronomy — a silicon chip that converts light into electric charge with high efficiency and low noise, read out pixel by pixel. It replaced photographic plates and remains the standard optical detector; Rubin's camera is built from a mosaic of them.

A detector in which each pixel has its own amplifier, allowing very fast, low-power readout. Increasingly used in astronomy for high-speed imaging and for techniques that need many frames per second, and ubiquitous in consumer cameras.

The broad family of detectors that must be cooled to cryogenic temperatures — sometimes thousandths of a degree above absolute zero — so that thermal noise does not swamp the faint astronomical signal. Bolometers and MKIDs are cryogenic detectors; the technique is essential across the infrared, millimetre, and X-ray.

A superconducting detector that records not just the arrival of a photon but its energy and precise time, with no read noise. Operating at temperatures near absolute zero, MKIDs are a frontier technology for the millimetre, submillimetre, and optical sky, and scale to large arrays.