Superconductor-Insulator-Superconductor Mixers for the 2 mm Band (129-174 GHz)

We present the design, construction and performance of backshort-tuned Single Side Band (SSB) and of fixed-tuned Double Side Band (DSB) Superconductor-Insulator-Superconductor (SIS) mixers covering the frequency range of 129-174 GHz (2 mm band). Receivers employing these SSB mixers have been continuously operated for astronomical observations on the six antennas of the IRAM Plateau de Bure Intereferometer (PdBI) since 2007 and on the IRAM 30 m Pico Veleta (PV) radio telescope since 2009. The DSB version of the mixer was employed in a prototype of a four-element focal plane array that was tested on the IRAM 30 m radio telescope. Both SSB and DSB mixers employ the same chip and are based on a wideband single ended probe transition from WR6 full-height waveguide to thin-film microstrip line and on a series array of two Nb/Al-AlOx/Nb junctions. The measured receiver noise for the four-element DSB mixer array pumped by a Gunn oscillator cascaded with a frequency doubler was in the range 25-35 K across the 135-168 GHz LO band. The PdBI and PV receivers equipped with the SSB mixers have measured noise temperatures in the range of 30 K to 60 K and an image sideband rejection below -10 dB over the 129-174 GHz RF band. The measurement results agree well with the predictions obtained through detailed simulations of the SIS receivers based on the standard theory of quantum mixing.