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

A compact 500GHz SIS receiver developed for space observations

D. Liu, Qi Yao, J. Li, S. C. Shi

Published Jun 9, 2011• 0 citations

Abstract

The submillimeter (submm) regime, ranging from 100 to 1000um, is an important frequency band for radio astronomy. A large number of astronomical spectral lines are located in this frequency region. Compared with ground-based observation, which is limited by the atmospheric absorption of signal, space borne platform provides perfect condition for submm observation. Here we introduce some preliminary results for a compact 500GHz SIS (Superconductor- Insulator-Superconductor) heterodyne receiver system developed for future space borne observation. Considering low power consumption requirement for space applications, we adopt a high critical temperature (Tc) NbN/AlN/NbN SIS tunnel junction for the mixer, a key component of the receiver system, which may work at relatively high temperature around 10 K. All the components, including the SIS mixer, HEMT low noise amplifier and optical lens, are assembled into a compact system. The whole system is cooled by a close-cycled 4K cryo-cooler in laboratory and test result shows a good noise performance, less than 250K at the 500GHz band. Detailed simulation and experimental results will be presented in this paper.

DOI: 10.1117/12.900112

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Heterodyne mixers based on superconducting SIS (superconductor-insulator-superconductor) tunnel junctions have been demonstrated to be the most sensitive coherent detectors at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. In fact, conventional superconducting SIS mixers with Nb/AIO(x)/Nb junction and Nb/SiO2/Nb tuning circuit have shown good performances with the noise temperature reaching as low as three times the quantum limit below 0.7THz, which is the gap frequency of Nb-based SIS junctions. However, due to the large loss in Nb thin-film superconducting microstrip lines, the noise performance of Nb SIS mixers deteriorates significantly above 0.7THz. With a gap frequency double that of Nb-based SIS junctions, NbN-based SIS junctions are of particular interest for the development of heterodyne mixers in the terahertz region.