The Simons Observatory: Studies of Phase Drift in RF Transmission Lines from the First Large-Scale Deployment of Microwave Frequency Multiplexing for Cosmology

Fulfilling the science goals of the Simons Observatory, a state-of-the-art cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment, has required deploying tens of thousands of superconducting bolometers. Reading out data from the observatory’s more than 67,000 transition-edge sensor (TES) detectors while maintaining cryogenic conditions requires an effective multiplexing scheme. The SLAC microresonator radio frequency (SMuRF) electronics have been developed to provide the warm electronics for a high-density microwave frequency multiplexing readout system, and this system has been shown to achieve multiplexing factors on the order of 1,000. SMuRF has recently been deployed to the Simons Observatory, which is located at 5,200 m on Cerro Toco in Chile’s Atacama Desert. As the SMuRF system is exposed to the desert’s diurnal temperature swings, resulting phase drift in RF transmission lines may introduce a systematic signal contamination. We present studies of phase drift in the room-temperature RF lines of the Simons Observatory’s 6 m large-aperture telescope, which hosts the largest deployment to date of TES microwave frequency multiplexing to a single telescope. We show that these phase drifts occur on time scales which are significantly longer than sky scanning, and that their contribution to on-sky in-transition detector noise is within the readout noise budget.