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International Conference on Infrared, Millimeter, and Terahertz Waves (IRMMW-THz)

Local oscillator noise suppression by a balanced SIS mixer in the 0.9 THz band

Takafumi Kojima, Y. Fujii, Shin’ichiro Asayama, Yoshinori Uzawa

Published Sep 1, 2013• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Local oscillator (LO) sideband noise suppression by a balanced superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixer was investigated in the 0.9 THz band. An LO signal in the 0.9 THz band was generated by using fixed tuned x9 (x3 by x3) multipliers located in the cryostat 4-K stage. Despite the huge LO noise of about 1000 K of a YIG driven LO, the measured receiver noise temperature for YIG and Gunn driven LOs was similar because of the high LO sideband noise rejection ratio (LNR) of the balanced mixer.

DOI
10.1109/irmmw-thz.2013.6665822

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Local oscillator (LO) sideband noise suppression by a balanced superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixer was investigated in the 0.9 THz band. An LO signal in the 0.9 THz band was generated by using fixed tuned x9 (x3 by x3) multipliers located in the cryostat 4-K stage. Despite the huge LO noise of about 1000 K of a YIG driven LO, the measured receiver noise temperature for YIG and Gunn driven LOs was similar because of the high LO sideband noise rejection ratio (LNR) of the balanced mixer.
Abstract We developed a low-noise, compact, balanced superconductor–insulator–superconductor (SIS) mixer, operating in the 787–950 GHz radio frequency range. A waveguide mixer block was designed to integrate all the key components, such as a radio frequency (RF) 90° hybrid coupler, two identical SIS mixer chips, bias-tees, and an intermediate frequency power-combiner. The RF waveguide 90° hybrid coupler consists of branch lines with wide slots optimized by numerical simulation, for ease of fabrication. The balanced mixer was installed into a cartridge type receiver, originally developed for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array Band 10 (787–950 GHz). The receiver demonstrated double sideband noise temperatures of approximately 200 K for most of the band, without any correction for loss in front of the receiver. The local oscillator noise rejection ratio was estimated to be more than 15 dB within the measured frequency range.
This article presents a heterodyne experiment which uses a 380–520 GHz planar circuit balanced Nb-Al2O3-Nb superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) quasiparticle mixer with 4–8 GHz instantaneous intermediate frequency (IF) bandwidth to quantitatively determine local oscillator (LO) noise. A balanced mixer is a unique tool to separate noise at the mixer's LO port from other noise sources. This is not possible in single-ended mixers. The antisymmetric IV characteristic of a SIS mixer further helps to simplify the measurements. The double-sideband receiver sensitivity of the balanced mixer is 2–4 times the quantum noise limit hν/kB over the measured frequencies with a maximum LO noise rejection of 15 dB. This work presents independent measurements with three different LO sources that produce the reference frequency but also an amount of near-carrier noise power which is quantified in the experiment as a function of the LO and IF frequency in terms of an equivalent noise temperature TLO. Two types of LO sources are used: a synthesizer driven amplifier/multiplier chain and a Gunn oscillator driven multiplier chain. With the first type of LO we find different near-carrier noise contributions using two different power pre-amplifiers of the LO system. For one of the two power pre-amplifiers we measure TLO=30±4 K at the LO frequency 380 GHz and TLO=38±10 K at 420 GHz. At the frequency band center 465 GHz of the Gunn driven LO we measure a comparable value of TLO=32±6 K. For the second power pre-amplifier, a significant higher TLO value of the synthesizer driven LO is found which is up to six times larger compared with the best values found for the Gunn driven LO. In a second experiment, we use only one of two SIS mixers of the balanced mixer chip in order to verify the influence of near-carrier LO noise power on a single-ended heterodyne mixer measurement. We find an IF frequency dependence of near-carrier LO noise power. The frequency-resolved IF noise temperature slope is flat or slightly negative for the single-ended mixer. This is in contrast to the IF slope of the balanced mixer itself which is positive due to the expected IF roll-off of the mixer. This indicates a higher noise level closer to the LO's carrier frequency. Our findings imply that near-carrier LO noise has the largest impact on the sensitivity of a receiver system which uses mixers with a low IF band, for example, superconducting hot-electron bolometer HEB mixers.
We have developed a low-noise balanced superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixer using a waveguide 3-dB 90-degree hybrid coupler over the radio frequency (RF) range of 790-950 GHz and intermediate frequency range of 4-12 GHz at an operating temperature of 4 K. The RF coupler was carefully designed in regards to machining errors so that the entire amplitude imbalance including the mixer gain became smaller. The fabricated coupler was characterized at both room and cryogenic temperature. The receiver noise temperature of the balanced SIS mixer was below 350 K over the entire frequency band and the local oscillator (LO) noise rejection ratio was estimated to be more than 15 dB. This result is equivalent to state-ofthe-art mixer performance at this frequency range.
We have successfully demonstrated a low-noise 0.78–0.95-THz waveguide mixer based on Nb/AlO x /Nb superconductor–insulator–superconductor (SIS) junctions integrated with an NbTiN/SiO 2 /Al superconducting inverted microstrip. The mixer employs a twin-junction tuning circuit and an impedance transformer which are designed to achieve both low noise and wideband operation. Corrected for optical input losses in front of the mixer, the double-sideband (DSB) noise temperature is below 120 K (<3 hf / k B ) around the local oscillator (LO) frequency of 0.88 THz and at an operating temperature of 2 K. The results represent state-of-the-art performance for mixers in the terahertz frequency range.
We describe the performance of a superconductor- insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixer operating in the frequency range of 780-950 GHz. Unlike most SIS mixers, the tunnel junction employs two different superconductors, a niobium nitride top and a niobium bottom electrode sandwiching an aluminum nitride barrier layer, fabricated on a niobium titanium nitride ground plane. The mixer was tested in a pulse tube cryostat, with all the optical components, in the signal path, mounted inside the vacuum environment to avoid attenuation of the RF signal as it propagates from the hot/cold loads to the mixer. With this setup, we have measured an RF-corrected noise temperature of ~220 K. In this article, we focus on investigating the influence of local oscillator (LO) power heating on the performance of the terahertz mixer. The increase in the junction's physical temperature can be observed experimentally by noting the suppression of the gap voltage in the pumped current-voltage (I-V ) curve as the LO pumping level is increased. Similar observation has already been reported, and attempts were made to estimate the effective temperature of the device using equations of heat transfer between the mixer chip layers. Here, we present an experimental method of quantifying this effect by recovering the effective temperature of the junction through comparing the pumped I-V curves at different pumping levels and fixed bath temperature, with the unpumped I-V curves obtained at varying bath temperatures. We also estimate, for the first time, the effect of heating on the noise temperature as a function of bath temperature and frequency. We show that for typical experimental parameters, the LO heating can increase the double-sideband receiver noise temperature by as much as 20%, and that in the frequency range of the measurements, the effective temperature of the junction at fixed LO power increases linearly with frequency at a rate of 0.5 K/100 GHz.
We present the design and the performance of a fixed-tuned, all niobium (Nb) Superconductor-Insulator-Superconductor (SIS) mixer covering RF frequencies from 163 to 211 GHz with 4-8 GHz IF bandwidth. The mixer uses two Nb/Al-AlOx/Nb junctions of size 3 μm2each with theRnAproduct of 30 Ω·μm2, in a twin junction configuration. An local oscillator (LO) directional coupler made of superconducting lines with slots in the ground plane is integrated on the SIS mixer chip. The isolated port of the LO coupler is terminated using a wide-band resistive load with a sheet resistance of 12 Ω/□. The SIS tuning circuitry is optimized to achieve best power match between the twin junctions and the embedding circuitry. The measurement of the double sideband mixer noise at 171 GHz shows that the receiver noise temperature is approximately 17 K, which is just 2hf/k. The estimated noise contribution from the RF loss and the IF chain at 176 GHz LO frequency is 8 K and 7.5 K respectively, resulting in a SIS mixer noise ofhf/2k. The mixer noise performance across the entire RF band varies between 19 to 25 K. This is to our knowledge the best reported noise temperature at these frequencies till now.