Abstract

We have demonstrated that a superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixer is applicable for a power detector to evaluate the sideband noise radiated from a submillimeter-wave local oscillator (LO) under development. A simple analysis shows SIS mixers provide better resolution of LO noise than Schottky barrier diode mixers when the available LO power is less than ~ 0.4 mW. Systematic measurement of dependence of receiver noise temperature <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">T</i> <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">RX</sub> on components and operational conditions of a photonic LO (Ph-LO) is carried out, which provides a guide to their optimization, e.g., source-laser power, photodiode drive current, use of an optical filter, and selection of an optical amplifier. Noise temperature of the Ph-LO estimated from experimental results ranges from ~ 1 times 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> K to ~ 5 times 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">4</sup> K as a function of operational conditions and parameters.

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