A Dual-Band Receiver Based on a Single Superconducting Hot Electron Bolometer Mixer for DATE5 Telescope

Simultaneous multifrequency observations can be of great advantage when line ratios need to be accurately determined. Five meters dome a terahertz explorer (DATE5) telescope is proposed with two observation bands: 0.85 THz band and 1.35 THz band. In this article, we report on a dual-band receiver based on a single quasi-optical superconducting hot-electron bolometer mixer. This novel concept allows simultaneous observation of the two bands for DATE5 telescope. Our measurement results show that the dual-band hot-electron bolometer (HEB) receiver can simultaneously resolve the line spectra in both frequency bands. In particular, an RF tone has been observed with in single and dual frequency mode and the heterodyne performance of the HEB mixer has been compared. Although there is a reduction of mixer conversion gain, the available observation time can be improved by decreasing the time for source pointing and double-beam switching. What is more, compared with conventional broadband receiver system, this novel technique can achieve compact system and provide a system redundancy for unattended observation.