ALMA Band 5 receiver cartridge

Design, performance, and commissioning

¹ Group for Advanced Receiver Development (GARD), Department of Space, Earth and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, 41296 Gothenburg, Sweden
e-mail: victor.belitsky@chalmers.se
² NOVA, The Netherlands Research School for Astronomy, Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, Landleven 12, 9747 AD Groningen, The Netherlands
³ European Southern Observatory (ESO), Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany
⁴ National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), NTC, 1180 Boxwood Estate Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903-4608, USA
⁵ ALMA Observatory, Alonso de Córdova 3107, Vitacura – Santiago, Chile

Received: 1 September 2017
Accepted: 27 November 2017

Abstract

We describe the design, performance, and commissioning results for the new ALMA Band 5 receiver channel, 163–211 GHz, which is in the final stage of full deployment and expected to be available for observations in 2018. This manuscript provides the description of the new ALMA Band 5 receiver cartridge and serves as a reference for observers using the ALMA Band 5 receiver for observations. At the time of writing this paper, the ALMA Band 5 Production Consortium consisting of NOVA Instrumentation group, based in Groningen, NL, and GARD in Sweden have produced and delivered to ALMA Observatory over 60 receiver cartridges. All 60 cartridges fulfil the new more stringent specifications for Band 5 and demonstrate excellent noise temperatures, typically below 45 K single sideband (SSB) at 4 K detector physical temperature and below 35 K SSB at 3.5 K (typical for operation at the ALMA Frontend), providing the average sideband rejection better than 15 dB, and the integrated cross-polarization level better than –25 dB. The 70 warm cartridge assemblies, hosting Band 5 local oscillator and DC bias electronics, have been produced and delivered to ALMA by NRAO. The commissioning results confirm the excellent performance of the receivers.