A 490 GHz planar circuit balanced Nb-Al$_\mathbf{2}$O$_{\mathbf{3}}$-Nb quasiparticle mixer for radio astronomy: Application to quantitative local oscillator noise determination

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a 490 GHz balanced Nb-Al2O3-Nb SIS quasiparticle mixer for radio astronomy, enabling precise measurement of local oscillator noise and revealing its impact on receiver sensitivity, especially for low IF band systems.

Contribution

It introduces a balanced mixer design capable of quantifying near-carrier LO noise and compares its performance with single-ended mixers, providing new insights into LO noise effects.

Findings

Balanced mixer achieves 2-4 times quantum noise limit sensitivity.

Near-carrier LO noise significantly affects low-IF receiver sensitivity.

IF frequency dependence of LO noise impacts system performance.

Abstract

This article presents a heterodyne experiment which uses a 380-520 GHz planar circuit balanced Nb-$\mathrm{Al_2O_3}$-Nb superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) quasiparticle mixer with 4-8 GHz instantaneous intermediate frequency (IF) bandwidth to quantitatively determine local oscillator (LO) noise. A balanced mixer is a unique tool to separate noise at the mixer's LO port from other noise sources. This is not possible in single-ended mixers. The antisymmetric IV characteristic of a SIS mixer further helps to simplify the measurements. The double-sideband receiver sensitivity of the balanced mixer is 2-4 times the quantum noise limit $h\nu/k_B$ over the measured frequencies with a maximum LO noise rejection of 15 dB. This work presents independent measurements with three different LO sources that produce the reference frequency but also an amount of near-carrier noise power which is quantified in the experiment as a function of the LO and IF frequency in terms of an equivalent noise temperature $T_{LO}$. In a second experiment we use only one of two SIS mixers of the balanced mixer chip, in order to verify the influence of near-carrier LO noise power on a single-ended heterodyne mixer measurement. We find an IF frequency dependence of near-carrier LO noise power. The frequency-resolved IF noise temperature slope is flat or slightly negative for the single-ended mixer. This is in contrast to the IF slope of the balanced mixer itself which is positive due to the expected IF roll-off of the mixer. This indicates a higher noise level closer to the LO's carrier frequency. Our findings imply that near-carrier LO noise has the largest impact on the sensitivity of a receiver system which uses mixers with a low IF band, for example superconducting hot-electron bolometer (HEB) mixers.