NIKA

The New IRAM KIDs Array (NIKA) is a Kinetic Inductance Detectors camera for bolometric observations at the IRAM 30m telescope. NIKA has been built by the Institut Néel (IN) and LPSC in Grenoble, France under the lead of Alain Benoit, and with the contributions of other persons forming the NIKA collaboration. In 2013 the main contributing institutes are IN, IRAM, IPAG, LPSC, AIG Cardiff.

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Overview

NIKA is a dual band instrument using few hundreds of Kinetic Inductance Detectors (KID). The KID resonances variations which are dependent on the incoming power are probed by a comb of tones allowing to perform frequency domain multiplexing. Being a prototype in constant evolution the arrays characteristics (number of pixels, field of view, sensitivity, etc.) have evolved over the years from each test run to the other. The main characteristics of the latest configuration are summarized on the following table.

• Number of KIDs = number of KIDs which resonance is probed by a tone generated by the electronics (in parenthesis = conservative number of KIDs for which no problem has been found in the data). Physically there's 224 KIDs on the 1mm array and 132 KIDs in the 2mm array.
• NEFD = Noise equivalent flux density outside of the atmosphere = sensitivity.
• HPBW = Half power beam width = angular resolution.
• FoV = effective Field-of-View calculated from area covered by all pixels.

• NIKA is a prototype used to test the technologies to be used in the bigger 6.5' FOV NIKA2 instrument currently in development phase (private Wiki here).

Call for proposals

NIKA is offered for the first time to the community the winter semester 2013/14:

• Call for observing proposals with the 30m

• Guidelines to estimate observing times.

Reports and Publications

• Reports:

  • Procedure for cooling down the PT NIKA cryostat -- for IRAM staff

• Refereed papers:

  • Performance and calibration of the NIKA camera at the IRAM 30 m telescope (Catalano et al. 2014, arXiv)

  • Improved mm-wave photometry for kinetic inductance detectors (Calvo et al. 2013, A&A)

  • NIKEL: Electronics and data acquisition for kilopixels kinetic inductance camera (O. Bourrion et al. 2012, arXiv)

  • A Dual-band Millimeter-wave Kinetic Inductance Camera for the IRAM 30 m Telescope (Monfardini et al. 2011, ApJS)

  • NIKA: A millimeter-wave kinetic inductance camera (Monfardini et al. 2010, A&A)

Support teams

• Overall coordinator:

  • Samuel Leclercq (IRAM/Grenoble, <leclercq@iram.fr>)

• NIKA team:

  • Alain Benoit <alain.benoit@grenoble.cnrs.fr> (PI, IN)

  • Alessandro Monfardini <monfardini@grenoble.cnrs.fr> (co-PI, IN)

  • François-Xavier Désert <francois-xavier.desert@obs.ujf-grenoble.fr> (IPAG)

  • Martino Calvo <martino.calvo@grenoble.cnrs.fr> (IN)

  • Antonio D'Addabbo <antonio.d-addabbo@grenoble.cnrs.fr> (IN)

  • Nicolas Ponthieu (IPAG)

  • Juan Macias-Perez <macias@lpsc.in2p3.fr> (LPSC)

  • Andrea Catalano <catalano@lpsc.in2p3.fr> (LPSC)

  • Remi Adam <adam@lpsc.in2p3.fr> (LPSC)

• IRAM/Granada support team:

  • Carsten Kramer (station manager, <kramer@iram.es>)

  • Israel Hermelo (continuum pool manager, <hermelo@iram.es>)

  • Manuel Gonzalez (heterodyne pool manager, <gonzalez@iram.es>)

  • Nicolas Billot (30m scheduler, <billot@iram.es>)

  • Albrecht Sievers (<sievers@iram.es>)

  • Robert Zylka
  • Walter Brunswig

NIKA How-to's

• Pool Preparation provides information on the observing modes offered for the continuum cameras as well as examples of the scripts that you need to prepare to observe your project.

• Calibrators provides flux measurements of primary and secondary calibrators for the IRAM 30m continuum cameras.

• Observing Session provides an example of a typical session with the continuum cameras at the 30m telescope.See also Data Reduction for NIKA pointing and focussing.

• For Experts: Alignment and pointing sesion (in prep.) provides a step-by-step procedure to implement a new pointing model with NIKA

• Data Reduction (in prep.) provides some basic examples to reduce NIKA data.

1st NIKA pool (February 2014)

The 1st NIKA pool will take place from the 18th of February to the 28th of February 2014.

Pool projects and observers

For information about the accepted projects and the observers at the 30m please go to:

• 1st NIKA pool organization.

• IRAM 30m pool observers for the Winter 2013 semester.

• Internal NIKA team page for organisation

Progress

The progress of the pool can be followed via:

• Pool data base

• TAPAS

Both databases are synchronized and can be used to write/read the logsheet.

Previous test and commissioning runs

• 7th test run (January 2014)

  • Go to the 7th run Wiki page

• 6th test run (June 2013)

  • Go to the 6th run Wiki page

• 5th test run (November 2012)

  • Go to the 5th run Wiki page

• 4th test run (June 2012)

  • Go to the 4th run Wiki page

• 3rd test run (October 2011)

  • Go to the 3rd run Wiki page

• 2nd test run (October 2010)

  • Go to the 2nd run Wiki page

• 1st test run (October 2009)

  • Go to the 1st run Wiki page

Author: Israel Hermelo (IRAM 30m continuum pool manager)

email: hermelo@iram.es

Created: 2013.12.16

This page is maintained by IH, CK, SL and the NIKA team

Last update: 2014.02.17