NASA Postdoctoral Program - High-Sensitivity Far-IR Detectors

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA's missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology. This specific opportunity seeks postdoctoral researchers with hands-on experience in low-temperature superconducting devices and far-IR to millimeter-wave instrumentation to join a team developing the world's most sensitive far-infrared detectors. The research will focus on detector arrays in which each pixel provides background-limited performance in a dispersive spectrometer on cryogenic space telescopes, with a per-pixel noise equivalent power of 10^-19 W/sqrt(Hz) or lower. The researcher(s) will characterize devices built in the JPL micro devices lab using a dilution-cooled sub-100mK cryostat, pursuing transition-edge-sensed (TES) bolometers, kinetic inductance detectors (KIDs), and quantum capacitance detectors (QCDs), with an initial emphasis on the bolometers in preparation for the SPICA mission. The work includes implementing frequency-domain readout techniques developed by US and international collaborators, requiring travel and interface with diverse scientists and engineers. Opportunities also exist for collaboration on ongoing and proposed ground-based and balloon-borne instruments targeting the early Universe, including SuperSpec, TIME, and TIM. The position is based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.