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.

thin-film circuits.

terahertz system

superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixers

millimeter-wave mixers

superconducting devices

astronomy instruments

Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA)

Author

Bhushan Billade

Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Advanced Receiver Development

Olle Nyström

Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Advanced Receiver Development

Denis Meledin

Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Advanced Receiver Development

Erik Sundin

Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Advanced Receiver Development

Igor Lapkin

Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Advanced Receiver Development

Mathias Fredrixon

Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Advanced Receiver Development

Vincent Desmaris

Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Advanced Receiver Development

Hawal Marouf Rashid

Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Advanced Receiver Development

Magnus Strandberg

Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Advanced Receiver Development

Sven-Erik Ferm

Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Advanced Receiver Development

Alexey Pavolotskiy

Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Advanced Receiver Development

Victor Belitsky

Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Advanced Receiver Development

IEEE Transactions on Terahertz Science and Technology

2156-342X (ISSN) 21563446 (eISSN)

Vol. 2 2 208-214 6153417

Subject Categories

Other Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering

DOI

10.1109/TTHZ.2011.2182220

More information

Created

10/8/2017