An all solid-state superconducting heterodyne receiver at terahertz frequencies

A superconducting hot-electron bolometer mixer receiver operating from 1 to 1.26 THz has been developed. This heterodyne receiver employs two solid-st ate local oscillators each consisting of a Gunn oscillator followed by two stages of varactor frequency multiplication, The measured receiver noise te mperature is 1350K at 1.035 THz and 2700K at 1.26 THz. This receiver demons trates that tunable solid-state local oscillators, supplying only a few mic ro-watts of output power, can be used in terahertz receiver applications.