Approaching the fundamental noise limit in Mo/Au TES bolometers with transverse normal metal bars

Recent efforts in the Transition Edge Sensor (TES) bolometer/calorimeter community have focused on developing detectors whose noise properties are near the fundamental limits. These include the in-band phonon noise, the out-of-band Johnson noise, and the 1/f noise. We have investigated the noise performance of Mo/Au-bilayer TES bolometers designed for infrared detectors. These detectors use normal metal regions for the suppression of excess noise, which are oriented either parallel to (“bars”) or transverse to (“stripes”) the direction of current flow. Two nearly identical detectors, one with stripes and one with bars, were fabricated at the NASA/GSFC detector development facility. Significantly lower noise is found with the normal metal regions oriented transversely. We compare the detailed noise measurement and quantitative analysis of the noise level in each device as a function of the detector resistance. Our preliminary result is that the best detector features only moderate excess noise in both the in-band region and in the out-of-band region. This noise performance is suitable for instruments with multiplexed TES arrays, such as GSFC''s FIBRE and SAFIRE. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]