A 4.7 THz HEB/QCL heterodyne receiver for STO-2

Author

Hayton, Darren J. ; Kloosterman, Jenna L. ; Jian-Rong Gao ; Vercruyssen, Nathan ; Walker, Christopher K. ; Qing Hu ; Tsung-Yu Kao

Author_Institution

SRON Netherlands Inst. for Space Res., Groningen, Netherlands

fYear

2014

fDate

14-19 Sept. 2014

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

2

Abstract

We report on a 4.7 THz heterodyne receiver being developed to fly on the Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory (STO-2) balloon platform. The receiver is based on a single pixel hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixer pumped by a 4.7 THz 3^rd order distributed feedback quantum cascade laser (QCL) as local oscillator and is designed for high resolution spectroscopy of the astronomically important neutral oxygen (OI) line at 4.745 THz. We describe the expected receiver performance and outline novel approaches to QCL amplitude and frequency/phase stabilization.

Keywords

distributed feedback lasers; high altitude stratospheric platforms; hot carriers; quantum cascade lasers; terahertz spectroscopy; HEB heterodyne receiver; QCL heterodyne receiver; STO-2; distributed feedback quantum cascade laser; frequency 4.7 THz; high resolution spectroscopy; hot electron bolometer mixer; local oscillator; neutral oxygen; stratospheric terahertz observatory balloon platform; Bolometers; Distributed feedback devices; Mixers; Noise; Observatories; Quantum cascade lasers; Receivers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Infrared, Millimeter, and Terahertz waves (IRMMW-THz), 2014 39th International Conference on

Conference_Location

Tucson, AZ

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IRMMW-THz.2014.6956203

Filename

6956203