TSI Seminar

Going Deep in the Far-Infrared

Jonas Zmuidzinas

Caltech

Nestled between the well-developed radio and infrared/optical wavelength bands, the far-infrared band has long been viewed as a technological desert, a no-man’s land. Yet, as has been speculated since the 1960s and demonstrated by NASA’s COBE mission in the mid-1990s, the universe shines brightly in the far infrared. Thus, reaching the fundamental sensitivity limits for astrophysical measurements at far-infrared wavelengths has been a major goal for the past three decades. Doing so requires a cold (4 K) telescope in space along with detectors and instrumentation sensitive enough to exploit the extremely low photon background. NASA is on the cusp of making this longstanding vision a reality with the PRIMA mission, now undergoing a Phase A study at JPL and GSFC. I will trace the history of the developments leading up to PRIMA with a focus on the enabling detector technology invented at Caltech and JPL.