A 4.7 THz HEB QCL receiver for STO2

A 4.7 THz HEB QCL receiver for STO2

Hayton, Darren J. (SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research)
Gao, J.R. (TU Delft QN/Gao Lab; SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research)
Laauwen, Wouter (SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research)
Mirzaei, B. (TU Delft QN/Gao Lab)
Khudchenko, Andrey (SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research)
Kloosterman, Jenna L. (Jet Propulsion Lab, Pasadena, CA)
Paveliev, Dmitry (Lobachevskii State University of Nizhny Novgorod)
Hu, Qing (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Kao, Wilt (LongWave Photonics LLC)
Vax, Vladimir (Russian Academy of Sciences)
Walker, Chris K. (University of Arizona)

2017

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.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:9b925dd8-7405-4fe9-9cbf-e050d7dddfe1

International Symposium on Space Terahertz Technology (ISSTT)

Proceedings of 27th International Symposium on Space Terahertz Technology, ISSTT 2016

27th International Symposium on Space Terahertz Technology, ISSTT 2016, 2016-04-12 → 2016-04-15, Nanjing, China

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2017 Darren J. Hayton, J.R. Gao, Wouter Laauwen, B. Mirzaei, Andrey Khudchenko, Jenna L. Kloosterman, Dmitry Paveliev, Qing Hu, Wilt Kao, Vladimir Vax, Chris K. Walker