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Kawamura J, Blundell R, Tong C-YE, Golts'man G, Gershenzon E, Voronov B. Superconductive NbN hot-electron bolometric mixer performance at 250 GHz. In: Proc. 7th Int. Symp. Space Terahertz Technol.; 1996. p. 331–6.
Abstract: Thin film NbN (<40 A) strips are used as waveguide mixer elements. The electron cooling mechanism for the geometry is the electron-phonon interaction. We report a receiver noise temperature of 750 K at 244 GHz, with / IF = 1.5 GHz, Af= 500 MHz, and Tphysical = 4 K. The instantaneous bandwidth for this mixer is 1.6 GHz. The local oscillator (LO) power is 0.5 1.tW with 3 dB-uncertainty. The mixer is linear to 1 dB up to an input power level 6 dB below the LO power. We report the first detection of a molecular line emission using this class of mixer, and that the receiver noise temperature determined from Y-factor measurements reflects the true heterodyne sensitivity.
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Kawamura J, Blundell R, Tong C-YE, Papa DC, Hunter TR, Gol'tsman G, et al. First light with an 800 GHz phonon-cooled HEB mixer receiver. In: Proc. 9th Int. Symp. Space Terahertz Technol. Pasadena, California, USA; 1998. p. 35–43.
Abstract: Phonon-cooled superconductive hot-electron bolometric (HEB) mixers are incorporated in a waveguide receiver designed to operate near 800 Gliz. The mixer elements are thin-film nio- bium nitride microbridges with dimensions of 4 nm thickness, 0.2 to 0.3 p.m in length and 2 jun in width. At 780 GHz the best receiver noise temperature is 840 K (DSB). The mixer IF bandwidth is 2.0 GHz, the absorbed LO power is —0.1 1.1W. A fixed-tuned version of the re- ceiver was installed at the Submillimeter Telescope Observatory on Mt. Graham, Arizona, to conduct astronomical observations. These observations represent the first time that a receiver incorporating any superconducting HEB mixer has been used to detect a spectral line of celes- tial origin.
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Ryabchun S, Tong C-yu E, Blundell R, Kimberk R, Gol’tsman G. Effect of microwave radiation on the stability of terahertz hot-electron bolometer mixers. In: Anwar M, DeMaria AJ, Shur MS, editors. Proc. SPIE. Vol 6373. SPIE; 2006. 63730J (1 to 5).
Abstract: We report our studies of the effect of microwave radiation, with a frequency much lower than that corresponding to the energy gap of the superconductor, on the performance of the NbN hot-electron bolometer (HEB) mixer incorporated into a THz heterodyne receiver. It is shown that exposing the HEB mixer to microwave radiation does not result in a significant rise of the receiver noise temperature and degradation of the mixer conversion gain so long as the level of microwave power is small compared to the local oscillator drive. Hence the injection of a small, but controlled amount of microwave radiation enables active compensation of local oscillator power and coupling fluctuations which can significantly degrade the stability of HEB mixer receivers.
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