An all solid-state superconducting heterodyne receiver at terahertz frequencies

Author

Tong, C. Edward ; Blundell, Raymond ; Papa, D. Cosmo ; Smith, Michael ; Kawamura, Jonathan ; Gol´tsman, Gregory ; Gershenzon, Eugene ; Voronov, Boris

Author_Institution

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophys., Cambridge, MA, USA

Volume

9

Issue

9

fYear

1999

fDate

9/1/1999 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

366

Lastpage

368

Abstract

A superconducting hot-electron bolometer mixer-receiver operating from 1 to 1.26 THz has been developed. This heterodyne receiver employs two solid-state local oscillators each consisting of a Gunn oscillator followed by two stages of varactor frequency multiplication. The measured receiver noise temperature is 1350 K at 1.035 THz and 2700 K at 1.26 THz. This receiver demonstrates that tunable solid-state local oscillators, supplying only a few micro-watts of output power, can be used in terahertz receiver applications

Keywords

Gunn oscillators; bolometers; frequency multipliers; heterodyne detection; submillimetre wave receivers; superconducting microwave devices; superconducting mixers; varactors; 1 to 1.26 THz; Gunn oscillator; hot-electron bolometer mixer-receiver; output power; receiver noise temperature; solid-state local oscillators; submillimetre-wave receivers; superconducting heterodyne receiver; terahertz frequencies; varactor frequency multiplication; Bolometers; Frequency conversion; Gunn devices; Local oscillators; Noise measurement; Power generation; Solid state circuits; Superconducting device noise; Temperature measurement; Varactors;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microwave and Guided Wave Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1051-8207

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/75.790476

Filename

790476