DEVELOPMENT OF MULTI-PIXEL HETERODYNE ARRAY INSTRUMENTS AT SUBMILLIMETER WAVELENGTHS

Heterodyne receivers at submillimeter wavelengths have played a major role in astrophysics as well as earth and planetary remote sensing. For astrophysics, the submillimeter is the primary frequency range for line and continuum radiation from cool gas and dust. It is useful for studying star formation, galaxies, dust and gas chemistry, and cosmology and CMB physics; heterodyne receivers have been the instrument of choice for many of these studies. Although most currently-deployed singledish heterodyne instruments are based on a single pixel, there is an increasing need for large arrays of high resolution heterodyne receivers for high speed mapping and multiple line spectroscopy. Design and development of multi-pixel heterodyne instruments for both ground and space based platforms are already under way at several different institutes and universities to achieve these goals. In this paper we review the challenging issues in the development of multi-pixel heterodyne receivers with state-of-the-art sensitivity at submillimeter wavelengths. Large heterodyne arrays are possible only by higher levels of component integration with associated packaging and power dissipation issues. Front-end architecture, including the choice of mixer elements and local oscillator (LO) injection techniques are critical to the overall design of the instrument. We present detailed designs of our multipixel heterodyne receiver arrays incorporating hot electron bolometer (HEB) and Schottky diode mixers. We also describe the state-of-the-art in LO technology, and present the results of our compact solid-state frequency agile submillimeter sources for use as distributed local oscillators.

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