Design And Calibration Of A Two-Channel Low Noise Heterodyne Receiver At 10.6 Microns

A dual channel, low noise heterodyne receiver has been constructed for Thomson scattering from alpha particles in a burning plasma experiment. A real time calibration method has been devised which references the integrated system noise to a blackbody source. Two wideband (>1GHz) HgCdTe photovoltaic mixers yield a double sideband system noise equivalent power of less than 1.5 x 10-20 W/Hz.