Investigation of the Performance of NbN Superconducting HEB Mixers of Different Critical Temperatures

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the critical temperature dependence of the performance of niobium nitride superconducting hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixers. The input noise temperature and intermediate frequency (IF) noise bandwidth of superconducting HEB mixers of different critical temperatures $T_{c}$ (between 6 and 12 K) are simulated with a hot spot model. Simulation results show that the mixer input noise temperature is the lowest at $T_{c}$ approximately equal to 7–9.5 K and the IF noise bandwidth increases with $T_{c}$ . We also measure three superconducting HEB mixers of different critical temperatures (i.e., 7.5, 8.8, and 10.3 K) at 0.85 and 1.3 THz. An agreement between measurement and prediction is observed.