Gal/Xgal U/LDB Spectroscopic/Stratospheric THz Observatory:: GUSTO

Gal/Xgal U/LDB Spectroscopic/ Stratospheric THz Observatory (GUSTO) is a NASA Explorers Mission of Opportunity that will make large scale maps of the Milky Way and Large Magellanic Cloud in three important interstellar lines: [CII], [OI], and [NII] at 158, 63, and 205 μm, respectively. During its ~75 day stratospheric (~36 km) flight, GUSTO’s 0...

Far-field beam pattern technique for high pointing accuracy characterization of GUSTO HEB mixer arrays

A 4.7 THz HEB QCL receiver for STO2

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...

Sensitivity of a hot electron bolometer heterodyne receiver at 4.3 THz

We have studied the sensitivity of a superconducting NbN hot electron bolometer mixer integrated with a spiral antenna at 4.3 THz. Using hot/cold blackbody loads and a beam splitter all in vacuum, we measured a double sideband receiver noise temperature of 1300 K at the optimum local oscillator (LO) power of 330 nW, which is about 12 times the...

Noise temperature of a 4.3 THz HEB receiver

We have characterized a heterodyne receiver based on an NbN hot electron bolometer integrated with spiral antenna as mixer and an optically pumped FIR ring laser at 4.3 THz as local oscillator (LO). We succeeded in measuring the receiver output power, responding to the hot/cold load, as a function of bias voltage at optimum LO power. From the...