Development of a new wideband heterodyne receiver system for the Osaka 1.85-m mm-submm telescope -- Receiver development & the first light of simultaneous observation in 230GHz and 345GHz bands with an SIS-mixer with 4-21GHz IF output

TL;DR

This paper reports the development of a wideband heterodyne receiver system for the Osaka 1.85-m telescope, enabling simultaneous observations of multiple CO lines in the 230GHz and 345GHz bands with low noise temperatures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multiplexing system with diplexers and SIS mixers for wideband, simultaneous CO line observations, and demonstrates successful first light observations.

Findings

Successful installation on the telescope and first light observations.

Achieved low receiver noise temperatures across bands.

Enabled simultaneous mapping of multiple CO lines.

Abstract

We have developed a wideband receiver system for simultaneous observations in CO lines of J = 2-1 and J = 3-2 transitions using the Osaka 1.85-m mm-submm telescope. As a frequency separation system, we developed multiplexers that connect three types of diplexers, each consisting of branch-line couplers and high-pass filters. The radio frequency (RF) signal is eventually distributed into four frequency bands, each of which is fed to a superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixer. The RF signal from the horn is divided into two frequency bands by a wideband diplexer with a fractional bandwidth of 56%, and then each frequency band is further divided into two bands by each diplexer. The developed multiplexers were designed, fabricated, and characterized using a vector network analyzer. The measurement results showed good agreement with the simulation. The receiver noise temperature was measured by connecting the SIS-mixers, one of which has a wideband 4-21GHz intermediate frequency (IF) output. The receiver noise temperatures were measured to be ~70K in the 220GHz band, ~100K in the 230GHz band, 110-175K in the 330GHz band, and 150-250K in the 345GHz band. This receiver system has been installed on the 1.85-m telescope at the Nobeyama Radio Observatory. We succeeded in the simultaneous observations of six CO isotopologue lines with the transitions of J = 2-1 and J = 3-2 toward the Orion KL as well as the on-the-fly (OTF) mappings toward the Orion KL and W 51.