Year: 2017
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: We report on a 4.7 THz heterodyne receiver designed for high resolution spectroscopy of the astronomically important neutral oxygen (OI) line at 4.745 THz. The receiver is based around a hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixer and quantum cascade laser (QCL) local oscillator. This receiver has been developed to fly on the Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory (STO-2), a balloon-borne 0.8 m telescope observing from an altitude of 44 km for 14 days or more. We measure a double sideband receiver noise temperature of 815 K (~ 7 times quantum noise) with a noise temperature IF bandwidth of 3.5 GHz. We describe the receiver performance expected in flight and outline novel approaches to QCL amplitude and frequency stabilization.
Authors: Hayton, Darren J. (author), Gao, J.R. (author), Laauwen, Wouter (author), Mirzaei, B. (author), Khudchenko, Andrey (author), Kloosterman, Jenna L. (author), Paveliev, Dmitry (author), Hu, Qing (author), Kao, Wilt (author), Vax, Vladimir (author), Walker, Chris K. (author)
Institutions: Space Research Organisation Netherlands, Delft University of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, N. I. Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Physics of Microstructures, University of Arizona
Language: English
Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2761749622