Development of a He 3 -He 4 sub kelvin active magnetic regenerative refrigerator (AMRR) with no moving parts

Abstract

Current state of the art particle and photon detectors such as Transition Edge Sensors (TES) and Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKID) use large arrays of sensors or detectors for space science missions. As the size of these space science detectors increases, future astrophysics missions will require sub-Kelvin cooling over larger areas. This leads to not only increased cooling power requirements, but also a requirement for distributed sub-Kelvin cooling. We propose an active Magnetic Regenerative Refrigerator (AMRR) that uses a Superfluid Magnetic Pump (SMP) to circulate liquid He 3 -He 4 through a magnetic regenerator to provide the necessary cooling at sub-Kelvin temperatures. Such system will be capable of distributing the cooling load to a relatively large array of objects. One advantage of using a fluid for heat transfer in such systems is to isolate components such as the superconducting magnets from detectors that are sensitive to magnetic fields. Another advantage of the proposed tandem AMRR is that it does not need Gas Gap Heat Switches (GGHS) to transfer heat during various stages of the magnetic cooling. Our proposed system consists of four superconducting magnets, one superleak, and three heat exchangers. It will operate continuously with no moving parts and it will be capable of providing the necessary cooling at sub-Kelvin temperatures for future space science applications.