John Lugten (UC Berkeley/ATNF Distinguished Visitor)

Cooled Array Feeds for the xNTD - John Lugten Colloquium

ATNF Marsfield Lecture Theatre

Abstract

Modern pulsetube and Stirling-cycle cryocoolers offer long lifetime,
low maintenance, high efficiency and excellent reliability. They are
attractive for many applications in astronomy. I will describe the
pulsetube cryocooler development program for the Allen Telescope Array
(ATA) and discuss how these devices operate. I will also explore
some possibilities for cooling parts of an array feed for the xNTD.
Finally, I will briefly describe the ATA antenna design and discuss
how it was chosen, since many of the considerations are similar for
xNTD.