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IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

Stability of Superconducting Hot Electron Bolometer Receivers

J. Chen, Yi Jiang, Min Liang, Lin Kang, Biaobing Jin, Weiwei Xu, Peiheng Wu

Published Jan 7, 2011• 10 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Superconducting receivers based on large hot electron bolometer (HEB) bridges were constructed and they show low noise temperatures. Their stability has been characterized by the Allan variance measurements with either far-infrared laser or Gunn oscillator plus multiplier chain as the local oscillator. An Allan time of about 1 s has been obtained. Also demonstrated is the effectiveness of a stabilization scheme in which a radiation at a frequency much lower than the gap frequency of niobium nitride is used for improvement.

DOI
10.1109/tasc.2010.2095815

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Superconducting receivers based on large hot electron bolometer (HEB) bridges were constructed and they show low noise temperatures. Their stability has been characterized by the Allan variance measurements with either far-infrared laser or Gunn oscillator plus multiplier chain as the local oscillator. An Allan time of about 1 s has been obtained. Also demonstrated is the effectiveness of a stabilization scheme in which a radiation at a frequency much lower than the gap frequency of niobium nitride is used for improvement.
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.
We are developing quasi-optical superconducting hot-electron bolometer (HEB) mixer receivers for astronomical and atmospheric remote sensing applications. The microbridge of the HEB mixer was fabricated at room temperature from a 6.8-nm-thick niobium titanium nitride (NbTiN) film deposited on a 20-nm-thick aluminum nitride (AlN) buffer layer, using a helicon sputtering technique at a slow deposition rate. The mixer was cooled to 4.2 K using a closed-cycled mechanical 4 K pulse-tube cryocooler with a temperature fluctuation of$\pm$1.6 mK. The stability of a large-volume NbTiN HEB mixer was studied at 1.47 THz by changing local oscillator (LO) power with the mixer bias voltage fixed. The intermediate frequency (IF) signal measured at 1.5 GHz had a maximum peak at a certain mixer bias current. The receiver noise temperature was lowest at around the IF maximum peak. It was also found that the IF signal was most stable at around the IF maximum peak under conditions in which the instability of LO pumping level, induced by small mechanical vibrations of the cryostat, remained in the optical system.
We report the results of our study of the stability of an 800 GHz hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixer cooled with a pulse-tube cryocooler. Pulse-tube cryocoolers introduce temperature fluctuations as well as mechanical vibrations at a frequency of$\sim1Hz,bothofwhichcancausereceivergainfluctuationsatthatfrequency.Inoursystem,themotorofthecryocoolerwasseparatedfromthecryostattominimizemechanicalvibrations,leavingthermaleffectsasthedominantsourceofthereceivergainfluctuations.Wemeasuredrootmeansquaretemperaturevariationsofthe4Kstageof1 Hz, both of which can cause receiver gain fluctuations at that frequency. In our system, the motor of the cryocooler was separated from the cryostat to minimize mechanical vibrations, leaving thermal effects as the dominant source of the receiver gain fluctuations. We measured root mean square temperature variations of the 4 K stage of1Hz,bothofwhichcancausereceivergainfluctuationsatthatfrequency.Inoursystem,themotorofthecryocoolerwasseparatedfromthecryostattominimizemechanicalvibrations,leavingthermaleffectsasthedominantsourceofthereceivergainfluctuations.Wemeasuredrootmeansquaretemperaturevariationsofthe4Kstageof\sim7mK.TheHEBmixerwaspumpedbyasolidstatelocaloscillatorat810GHz.Therootmeansquarecurrentfluctuationsatthelownoiseoperatingpoint(1.50mV,56.57 mK. The HEB mixer was pumped by a solid state local oscillator at 810 GHz. The root mean square current fluctuations at the low noise operating point (1.50 mV, 56.57mK.TheHEBmixerwaspumpedbyasolidstatelocaloscillatorat810GHz.Therootmeansquarecurrentfluctuationsatthelownoiseoperatingpoint(1.50mV,56.5\mu\hbox{A})were) were)were\sim 0.12\ \mu\hbox{A}$, and were predominantly due to thermal fluctuations. To stabilize the bias current, microwave radiation was injected to the HEB mixer. The injected power level was set by a proportional-integral-derivative controller, which completely compensates for the bias current oscillations induced by the pulse-tube cryocooler. Significant improvement in the Allan variance of the receiver output power was obtained, and an Allan time of 5 s was measured.
In this paper we discuss the stability of heterodyne terahertz receivers based on small volume NbN phonon cooled hot electron bolometers (HEBs). The stability of these receivers can be broken down in two parts: the intrinsic stability of the HEB mixer and the stability of the local oscillator (LO) signal injection scheme. Measurements show that the HEB mixer stability is limited by gain fluctuations with a 1∕f spectral distribution. In a 60MHz noise bandwidth this results in an Allan variance stability time of ∼0.3s. Measurement of the spectroscopic Allan variance between two intermediate frequency (IF) channels results in a much longer Allan variance stability time, i.e., 3s between a 2.5 and a 4.7GHz channel, and even longer for more closely spaced channels. This implies that the HEB mixer 1∕f noise is strongly correlated across the IF band and that the correlation gets stronger the closer the IF channels are spaced. In the second part of the paper we discuss atmospheric and mechanical system stability requirements on the LO-mixer cavity path length. We calculate the mixer output noise fluctuations as a result of small perturbations of the LO-mixer standing wave, and find very stringent mechanical and atmospheric tolerance requirements for receivers operating at terahertz frequencies.
In this paper, the performance of a quasi-optical NbN superconducting hot-electron bolometer (HEB) mixer, cryogenically cooled by a close-cycled 4-K refrigerator, is thoroughly investigated at 300, 500, and 850 GHz. The lowest receiver noise temperatures measured at the respective three frequencies are 1400, 900, and 1350 K, which can go down to 659, 413, and 529 K, respectively, after correcting the loss and associated noise contribution of the quasi-optical system before the measured superconducting HEB mixer. The stability of the quasi-optical superconducting HEB mixer is also investigated here. The Allan variance time measured with a local oscillator pumping at 500 GHz and an IF bandwidth of 110 MHz is 1.5 s at the dc-bias voltage exhibiting the lowest noise temperature and increases to 2.5 s at a dc bias twice that voltage.
The superconducting HEB device is so far the most promising low noise mixer in the THz frequency range. It out-performs other existing receiver systems because it has low noise temperature and sufficient bandwidth for applications in the FIR range such as astronomy, remote sensing and plasma diagnostics. This work investigates the linear and nonlinear characteristics of NbN Hot Electron Bolometer (HEB) devices. First of all, a thorough expression of the Johnson noise and the thermal fluctuation noise has been re-derived. Our circuit model is more preferable for the HEB devices than the traditional one being used for the semiconductor bolometer. Secondly, the equivalent noise temperature of our receiver system has been significantly improved: the noise temperature went from the original 5800K to a record of 500K for silicon substrate devices. We are also getting improved noise performance for the new MgO substrate devices. The simulation results agree with the measured data very well around the optimum operating point. Finally, the device in the unstable region can be stabilized by connecting a series resistor with higher resistance than the negative resistance of the device. Two frequencies are related to the oscillation waveforms of the voltage and the current of the device. The first one is the repetition frequency that is actually related to the external circuit. The second one is the relaxation frequency that is related to the intrinsic phenomena of the device itself. The domain wall velocity and the relaxation oscillation frequency have been calculated both theoretically and experimentally. The calculated results are within a satisfactory range compared with the measured data. Also, a thorough explanation of the device oscillation process has been presented.