A Passive Heterodyne HEB Imager Operating at 850 GHz

Published

May 15, 2008

Author(s)

Eyal Gerecht, Dazhen Gu, Lixing You, Sigfrid Yngvessen

Abstract

We report the development and characterization of a passive heterodyne hot electron bolometer (HEB) imager operating at 850 GHz. HEB detectors provide unprecedented sensitivity and spectral resolution at terahertz frequencies covering the frequency range of 0.5-5 THz. Terahertz imagers based on HEB technology have sufficient sensitivity to operate in a passive imaging mode, thus eliminating the need for active illumination. We demonstrated a fully automated passive imaging system based on our HEB technology. The front-end heterodyne detector includes a quasi-optically coupled HEB device in close proximity to an MMIC low-noise IF amplifier. We integrated a compact commercial harmonic multiplier LO source to provide the LO biasing for the HEB detector. Our high spectral resolution terahertz imager has a noise equivalent temperature difference (NEδT) value of 0.4 K and a spatial resolution of about 4 millimeters.

Citation

IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques

Volume

Vol.56

Issue

Number 5

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

HEB detectors, heterodyne detection, quasi-optical coupling, terahertz antennas, Terahertz imaging

Citation

Gerecht, E. , Gu, D. , You, L. and Yngvessen, S. (2008), A Passive Heterodyne HEB Imager Operating at 850 GHz, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=32749 (Accessed October 8, 2025)