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

Development of a low noise heterodyne receiver at 3THz

Yoshihisa Irimajiri, Akira Kawakami, Isao Morohashi, Norihiko Sekine, Satoshi Ochiai, Shukichi Tanaka, Iwao Hosako, Motoaki Yasui

Published Sep 1, 2012• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A Low noise superconducting heterodyne receiver at 3THz is developing for atmospheric or astronomical observations. A NbN HEB(Hot Electron Bolometer) with quasi optical planar (spiral or log-periodic) antenna and a THz-QCL(Quantum Cascade Laser) which is used as a local oscillator are fabricated in our laboratory. The receiver noise temperature in double sideband of ~2800K which is around 19 times of quantum limit is measured.

DOI
10.1109/irmmw-thz.2012.6380478

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A Low noise superconducting heterodyne receiver at 3THz is developing for atmospheric or astronomical observations. A NbN HEB(Hot Electron Bolometer) with quasi optical planar (spiral or log-periodic) antenna and a THz-QCL(Quantum Cascade Laser) which is used as a local oscillator are fabricated in our laboratory. The receiver noise temperature in double sideband of ~2800K which is around 19 times of quantum limit is measured.
We have developed the 3.1-THz heterodyne receiver using an NbTiN Hot-Electron Bolometer (HEB) mixer and a THz Quantum Cascade Laser (THz-QCL) as a local oscillator. A quasi optical twin-slot antenna is adopted for the coupling of the RF signal with the mixer. The receiver noise temperature is measured to be 5600 K in DSB. When the optical loss is corrected, it is as low as 2100 K. This result demonstrates that the NbTiN HEB mixer works with the equivalent level of performance at 3.1 THz in comparison with the NbN HEB mixers usually employed in this frequency region.
We highlight the progress on NbN hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixers achieved through fruitful collaboration between SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research and Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. This includes the best receiver noise temperatures of 700 K at 1.63 THz using a twin-slot antenna mixer and 1050 K at 2.84 THz using a spiral antenna coupled HEB mixer. The mixers are based on thin NbN films on Si and fabricated with a new contact-process and-structure. By reducing their areas HEB mixers have shown an LO power requirement as low as 30 nW. Those small HEB mixers have demonstrated equivalent sensitivity as those with large areas provided the direct detection effect due to broadband radiation is removed. To manifest that a HEB based heterodyne receiver can in practice be used at arbitrary frequencies above 2 THz, we demonstrate a 2.8 THz receiver using a THz quantum cascade laser (QCL) as local oscillator.
In this paper, we present a low noise integrated heterodyne receiver at 2.7 THz. This heterodyne receiver is based on a superconducting hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixer and a low power consumption quantum cascade laser (QCL) that are both integrated on the same 4 K stage of a pulse tube cooler. We measured the noise temperature of the HEB/QCL integrated heterodyne receiver by using hot and cold blackbody loads in vacuum. The lowest double sideband receiver noise temperature is about 1000 K at 2.7 THz, and reduced to 500 K after eliminating the quasi-optical losses. In addition, the HEB/QCL integrated heterodyne receiver demonstrates an intermediate frequency (IF) noise bandwidth of 4 GHz.
Heterodyne receivers for applications in astronomy and planetary research need quantum limited sensitivity. In instruments which are currently build for SOFIA and Herschel superconducting hot electron bolometers (HEB) will be used to achieve this goal at frequencies above 1.4 THz. The local oscillator and the mixer are the most critical components for a heterodyne receiver operating at 3-5 THz. The design and performance of an optically pumped THz gas laser optimized for this frequency band will be presented. In order to optimize the performance for this frequency hot electron bolometer mixers with different in-plane dimensions and logarithmic-spiral feed antennas have been investigated. Their noise temperatures and beam patterns were measured. Above 3 THz the best performance was achieved with a superconducting bridge of 2.0 x 0.2 μm2 incorporated in a logarithmic spiral antenna. The DSB noise temperatures were 2700 K, 4700 K and 6400 K at 3.1 THz, 4.3 THz and 5.2 THz, respectively. The results demonstrate that the NbN HEB is very well suited as a mixer for THz heterodyne receivers up to at least 5 THz.
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.
Low noise terahertz (THz) receivers based on superconducting niobium nitride (NbN) hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixers have been designed, fabricated and measured for applications in astronomy and cosmology. The NbN HEB mixer consists of a planar antenna and an NbN bridge connecting across the antenna's inner terminals on a high-resistivity Si substrate. To eliminate the influence of direct detection and instability of the local oscillation (LO) power, a wire grid has been used to change the input LO power for compensating the shift of bias current during Y-factor measurement. The double sideband (DSB) receiver noise temperatures at 4.2K without corrections have been measured from 0.65 to 3.1THz. The excess quantum noise factor β of about 4 has been obtained, which agrees well with the calculated value. Allan variance of the HEB has been characterized, and Allan time TA longer than 0.4s is obtained. We also estimated the temperature resolution of the HEB from the Allan variance and obtained the minimum temperature resolution of 1.1K using a Gunn oscillator with its multipliers at 0.65THz as an LO source.