Electrical-contact-free readout of the response of superconductive bolometer arrays using thermal cross talk.

We utilized and investigated the unique dependence of the magnitude and phase of the response on thermal cross talk between bolometer pixels in an array to measure the response of the devices through fewer monitoring devices. We show the feasibility of the proposed readout technique by use of two source pixels in an array, as the image-mapping devices, and one optically shielded pixel as the readout device. While the sensing pixels were electrical-contact free, the readout device was current biased in 4-probe current-bias configuration.