Heterodyne Receiver for Origins

Abstract

The Heterodyne Receiver for Origins (HERO) is the first detailed study of a heterodyne focal plane array receiver for space applications. HERO gives the Origins Space Telescope the capability to observe at very high spectral resolution (R ¼ 10 7 ) over an unprecedentedly large far-infrared (FIR) wavelengths range (111 to 617 μm) with high sensitivity, with simultaneous dual polarization and dual-frequency band operation. The design is based on prior successful heterodyne receivers, such as Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared /Herschel, but surpasses it by one to two orders of magnitude by exploiting the latest technological developments. Innovative components are used to keep the required satellite resources low and thus allowing for the first time a convincing design of a large format heterodyne array receiver for space. HERO on Origins is a unique tool to explore the FIR universe and extends the enormous potential of submillimeter astronomical spectroscopy into new areas of astronomical research. © The Authors.Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

Astrochemistry With the Orbiting Astronomical Satellite for Investigating Stellar Systems

“…The Origins Survey Spectrometer (OSS) would make far-IR spectroscopic measurements with a maximum spectral resolving power R ∼ 3 × 10 5 (Bradford et al, 2021). A fourth instrument, the Heterodyne Receiver for Origins (HERO), was also studied as a way to provide higher spectral resolving power than OSS ∼10 6 -10 7 ; (Wiedner et al, 2021). However, HERO was not included in the baseline mission concept because heterodyne detection, limited by receiver quantum noise, does not require a very cold (4.5 K) telescope such as Origins.…”

The science case and challenges of space-borne sub-millimeter interferometry

“…The first type is the space-proven architecture of heterodyne receivers that uses super-conducting mixers as a first stage. Examples are the HIFI instrument on ESA's Herschel mission [81] and the future HERO instrument on the Origins space telescope [82], or the heterodyne instruments on the airborne observatory SOFIA [83] and the future Millimetron Space Observatory [66]. The second type are also heterodyne receivers, but with direct amplification of the THz signal before downconversion to an intermediate frequency (IF).…”

“…These devices require state-of-the-art components where the mixer, the local oscillator and the first amplifier are the most critical elements for low-noise performance systems. Figure 11 shows the noise temperature for different heterodyne receivers with ultra-cold mixers used in past, present and future telescopes [82]. When these receivers are used in space-borne missions, it is necessary to take into account that they are very demanding on spacecraft resources and their consumption needs to be carefully controlled.…”

Toward determining the number of observable supermassive black hole shadows

“…While angular resolution may ultimately limit the number of observable black hole shadows for groundbased interferometers like the EHT and ngEHT, sensitivity is expected to be the limiting factor for many prospective interferometers that network with spacebased stations. For instance, a baseline connecting a station on Earth to one located at the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point -such as may be possible using the proposed Millimetron (Kardashev et al 2014) or Origins (Wiedner et al 2021) space telescopes -would have a finest 230 GHz angular resolution of θ r ≈ 0.2 µas. At this resolution, we expect that a sensitivity of σ ν 10 −4 Jy would be required to detect even a single object, and decreasing θ r at this fixed sensitivity would only serve to decrease the expected source counts.…”