At present, nearly quantum-limited heterodyne receivers for Terahertz (THz) frequencies require cooling to temperatures below 4K. We are working to build semiconductor-based "tunable antenna-coupled intersubband terahertz" (TACIT) heterodyne mixers for 1-5 THz. We predict that they can achieve single-sideband noise temperatures of a few hundred K with intermediate frequency (IF) bandwidth >10 GHz, while operating at lattice temperatures >20 K and requiring local oscillator (LO) power ~ 1 μW.
@article{arxiv.1909.10664,
title = {Tunable Antenna-Coupled Intersubband Terahertz (TACIT) Mixers: The Quantum Limit Without the Quantum Liquid},
author = {M. S. Sherwin and C. Cates and B. Serapiglia and Y. Dora and J. B. Williams and K. Maranowski and A. C. Gossard and W. R. McGrath},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.10664},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
This paper was published in the Proceedings of the Far-IR, Submm, and mm Detector Technology Workshop, Monterey, CA (2002). The URL for the proceedings no longer exists, so this eprint is submitted here for public access. The eprint is identical to the version published in 2002. One correction is required: in Eq. (4): Gamma/(2*pi), not Gamma*(2*pi), is the HWHM of the intersubband transition