Superconducting hot electron bolometers on silicon nitride membranes for terahertz waveguide mixers

Abstract

The topic of this work is the development of Hot Electron Bolometer (HEB) mixers on freestanding membrane substrates for terahertz high resolution heterodyne receiver systems. The radio astronomy in the THz frequency spectrum is still in the beginning. At present much effort is put into the development of novel telescopes as well as in detector technologies. This work focuses on the development of THz waveguide detectors with superconducting Hot Electron Bolometer (HEB) mixers. These are primarily aimed for the use in the airborne Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) (1.9 THz) and the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) telescope (1.4 THz) in northern Chile ...