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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

NbN hot electron bolometer mixer at 5.3 THz

Wen Zhang, J. R. Gao, P. Khosropanah, Tarun Bansal, T. M. Klapwijk, W. Miao, S. C. Shi

Published Jun 16, 2010• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

We report the sensitivity of a superconducting NbN hot electron bolometer mixer integrated with a tight spiral antenna at 5.3 THz. Using a measurement setup with black body calibration sources and a beam splitter in vacuo, and an antireflection coated Si lens, we obtained a double sideband receiver noise temperature of 1150 K, which is 4.5 times hν/kB (quantum limit). Our experimental results in combination with an antenna-to-bolometer coupling simulation suggest that HEB mixer can work well at least up to 6 THz, suitable for next generation of high-resolution spectroscopic of the neutral atomic oxygen (OI) line at 4.7 THz.

DOI
10.1117/12.857683

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We report the sensitivity of a superconducting NbN hot electron bolometer mixer integrated with a tight spiral antenna at 5.3 THz. Using a measurement setup with black body calibration sources and a beam splitter in vacuo, and an antireflection coated Si lens, we obtained a double sideband receiver noise temperature of 1150 K, which is 4.5 times hν/kB (quantum limit). Our experimental results in combination with an antenna-to-bolometer coupling simulation suggest that HEB mixer can work well at least up to 6 THz, suitable for next generation of high-resolution spectroscopic of the neutral atomic oxygen (OI) line at 4.7 THz.
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We report the measured sensitivities of a superconducting NbN hot electron bolometer (HEB) heterodyne receiver at 5.25 THz. The terahertz (THz) radiation is quasioptically coupled to the HEB mixer with a lens and a spiral antenna. Using a measurement setup with black body calibration sources and a beam splitter in vacuum, and an antireflection coated Si lens, we obtained a double sideband (DSB) receiver noise temperature ( ) of 1150 K, which is 4.5 times h/k (the quantum limit). In addition, the measured far field beam patterns of the integrated lens antenna from 2.5 THz to 5.3 THz show collimated beams that make it reliable to measure using the vacuum setup. Our experimental results in combination with an antenna-to-bolometer coupling simulation suggest that the HEB mixer can work well at least up to 6 THz, suitable for next generation of high-resolution spectroscopic space telescopes and, in particular, for the detection of the neutral atomic oxygen (OI) line at 4.7 THz. DSB rec T
We have studied the sensitivity of a superconducting NbN hot electron bolometer mixer integrated with a spiral antenna at 4.3 THz. Using hot/cold blackbody loads and a beam splitter all in vacuum, we measured a double sideband receiver noise temperature of 1300 K at the optimum local oscillator (LO) power of 330 nW, which is about 12 times the quantum noise (hν/2kB). Our result indicates that there is no sign of degradation of the mixing process at the super-THz frequencies. Also, a measurement method is introduced where the hot/cold response of the receiver is recorded at constant voltage bias of the mixer, while varying the LO power. We argue that this method provides an accurate measurement of the receiver noise temperature, which is not influenced by the LO power fluctuations and the direct detection effect. Moreover, our sensitivity data suggests that one can achieve a receiver noise temperature of 1420 K at the frequency of [OI] line (4.7 THz), which is scaled from the sensitivity at 4.3 THz with frequency.
Low noise receivers using quasi-optical superconducting niobium nitride (NbN) hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixers have been designed, fabricated and measured in the terahertz (THz) frequency range for THz applications in astronomy and cosmology. The NbN HEB mixers consist of a planar complementary antenna and several nanometer (nm) thick NbN bridge connecting across the antenna's inner terminals on high-resistivity Si substrates. A double sideband (DSB) receiver noise temperature of 664 K at 0.76 THz, 920 K at 1.6 THz, 1630 K at 2.5 THz and 1710 K at 3.1 THz has been obtained without corrections and no anti-reflection (AR) coating on the surface of the lens.
We demonstrate that the performance of NbN lattice cooled hot electron bolometer mixers depends strongly on the interface quality between the bolometer and the contact structure. Both the receiver noise temperature and the gain bandwidth can be improved by a factor of 2 by cleaning the interface and adding an additional superconducting interlayer to the contact pad. Using this we obtain a double sideband receiver noise temperature of 950 K at 2.5 THz and 4.3 K, using a 0.4/spl times/4 /spl mu/m HEB mixer with a spiral antenna. At the same bias point, we obtain an IF gain bandwidth of 6 GHz. To comply with current demands on THz mixers for use in space based receivers we reduce the device size to 0.15/spl times/1 /spl mu/m and use a twin slot antenna. We report measurements of the noise temperature, LO power requirement, stability and the direct detection effect, using a mixer with a 1.6 THz twin slot antenna and a 1.462 THz solid state LO source with calibrated output power.
We have studied the sensitivity of a superconducting NbN hot electron bolometer mixer integrated with a spiral antenna at 4.3THz. Using hot/cold blackbody loads and a beam splitter all in vacuum, we measured a double sideband receiver noise temperature of 1300K at the optimum local oscillator (LO) power of 330nW, which is about 12 times the quantum noise (hν∕2kB). Our result indicates that there is no sign of degradation of the mixing process at the superterahertz frequencies. Moreover, a measurement method is introduced which allows us for an accurate determination of the sensitivity despite LO power fluctuations.