Heterodyne Receivers

N3AR is a single-pixel, dual polarization, sideband separating heterodyne receiver operating in the extended W-band frequency range (67 – 116 GHz; i.e. wavelength range around 3 mm). Since October 2024, N3AR is installed in the Cassegrain cabin of the APEX telescope.

LASMA is a 7-pixel sideband-separating heterodyne array receiver operating between 273 and 374 GHz at the APEX telescope.

The NFLASH receiver system is a state-of-the-art single-pixel heterodyne spectrometer installed in January 2020 at the APEX telescope in Chile. It has the capability to perform simultaneous dual polarization observations in three important frequency bands: 200-270 GHz, 385-510 GHz and 780-950 GHz.

GREAT was a highly modular instrument platform for heterodyne receivers for high-resolution spectroscopy on board of SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy. SOFIA (a joint project of NASA and DLR) was an air-borne observatory on board a modified Boeing 747-SP.

The upGREAT channels were second generation receivers for the GREAT platform. The two instruments were medium-sized arrays (14 and 7 pixels).

4GREAT provided four single-pixel receivers in a common cryostat, offering simultaneous observations of an astronomical source in four different frequency bands.

CHAMP⁺ was a dual-color heterodyne array for spectroscopy in the 450 and 350 μm atmospheric windows which has been built in collaboration with SRON-G (providing the SIS-mixers) and JPL.

FLASH/FLASH⁺ was a dual-frequency MPIfR principal investigator (PI) receiver, operating simultaneously - on orthogonal polarizations - in two different atmospheric windows: from 2005 to 2009 in the 460 and 810 GHz range, then from 2009 around 345 and 460 GHz.

In Summer 1999 the division took responsibility (as subsystem manager) for the local oscillator de­ve­lopment for HIFI (Heterodyne Instrument for Herschel – formerly FIRST). Herschel was ESA’s 4^th cornerstone in the Horizon 2000 science program, and observed from 2009 to 2013 from the Lagrange point L2.