Design of Radio Astronomical Receivers for Laboratory Molecular Spectroscopic Measurments

In the context of the Nanocosmos project (European Research Council Sinergy Project), the use of radioastronomical receivers as detectors for molecular spectroscopy and chemical reactivity experiments is proposed. The radioastromical receivers have several GHz bandwidths in the frontend and few kHz spectral resolution in the backend. On the other hand, observed gases are in a vacuum cylindrical chamber of one meter length with two dielectric windows at the bases, where higher pressure conditions over the gases are reached in order to simulate the big size of astronomical objects. The receiver designed combines Q and W band observations simultaneously. The bandwidth coverage is 31.5-50.0 GHz and 72.0-116.0 GHz, which exceeds the standard frequency bands designation of the WR22 and WR10 waveguides.