Performance of the First ALMA Band 5 Production Cartridge

Journal article, 2012

We present performance of the first ALMA Band 5 production cartridge, covering frequencies from 163 GHz to 211 GHz. ALMA Band 5 is a dual polarization, sideband separation (2SB) receiver based on all Niobium (Nb) Superconductor-Insulator-Superconductor (SIS) tunnel junction mixers, providing 16 GHz of instantaneous RF bandwidth for astronomy observations. The 2SB mixer for each polarization employs a quadrature configuration. The sideband separation occurs at the output of the IF hybrid that has integrated bias-T for biasing the mixers, and is produced using superconducting thin film technology. Experimental verification of the Band 5 cold cartridge performed together with warm cartridge assembly, confirms that the system noise temperature is below 45 K over most of the RF band, which is less than five photon noise (5 hf/k). This is to our knowledge, the best results reported at these frequencies. The measurement of the sideband rejection indicates that the sideband rejection better than 10 dB over 90% of the observational band.