Demonstration of a 630-GHz photomixer used as a local oscillator

Author

Duerr, E.K. ; McIntosh, K.A. ; Duffy, S.M. ; Calawa, S.D. ; Verghese, S. ; Tong, C.-Y.E. ; Kimberk, R. ; Blundell, R.

Author_Institution

Lincoln Lab., MIT, Lexington, MA, USA

Volume

1

fYear

1999

fDate

13-19 June 1999

Firstpage

127

Abstract

We report the first successful demonstration of a photomixer local oscillator (LO) integrated with a superconducting heterodyne detector. The photomixer LO generated the difference frequency of two diode lasers by optical heterodyne conversion in low temperature-grown GaAs. The measured receiver noise temperature, 331 K at 630 GHz, compares favorably with that achieved using a varactor multiplier LO. We also report the design of a high power distributed photomixer structure.

Keywords

laser beam applications; microwave photonics; optical frequency conversion; submillimetre wave mixers; submillimetre wave oscillators; 630 GHz; GaAs; diode lasers; high power distributed photomixer structure; local oscillator; low temperature-grown GaAs; optical heterodyne conversion; photomixer LO; superconducting heterodyne detector; Detectors; Diode lasers; Frequency conversion; Local oscillators; Optical frequency conversion; Optical mixing; Optical noise; Optical receivers; Superconducting device noise; Temperature measurement;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Symposium Digest, 1999 IEEE MTT-S International

Conference_Location

Anaheim, CA, USA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-5135-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MWSYM.1999.779440

Filename

779440