An Antenna with a Feeder for a Superconducting Terahertz Josephson Oscillator with Phase Locking

A principal layout of a Josephson terahertz radiation oscillator integrated with a transmitting antenna-lens system and a harmonic mixer (HM) for phase locking of radiation has been proposed and was successfully implemented. Two antenna-feeder systems designed for the central frequencies of 0.3 and 0.6 THz and located on the same chip with the oscillator are numerically simulated and fabricated. A microstrip transmission line between the oscillator and the antenna is used as the feeder. A study was carried out on matching the oscillator power and HM for two designs; the frequency range of pumping HM was 0.25-0.45 and 0.5-0.68 THz for the designs at 0.3 and 0.6 THz, respectively. Good agreement was obtained between experimental results and numerical simulations. A study of the spectral characteristics of the radiation of the oscillator into the external space for the 0.6 THz design using a superconducting integrated spectrometer was carried out. The linewidth of an emission line in free-running regime was of the order of several megahertz; in the phase locking regime down to tens of kilohertz with a signal-to-noise ratio of more than 20 dB was obtained

Hall helps Ohm: some corrections to negative-U centers approach to transport properties of YBa2_2Cu3_3Ox_x and La2−x_{2-x}Srx_xCuO4_4

For broad oxygen and strontium doping ranges, temperature dependences (T-dependences) of the normal state resistivity \rho(T) of YBa_2Cu_3O_x (YBCO) and La_(2-x)Sr_xCuO_4 (LSCO) are calculated and compared to experiments. Holes transport was taken in the \tau-approximation, where \tau(T,\epsilon) is due to acoustic phonons. Besides, T-dependence of the chemical potential \mu(T) and effective carrier mass m* ~10-100 free electron masses, obtained by negative-U centers modelling the T-dependence of the Hall coefficient, were used to calculate \rho(T). In addition, it is demonstrated that anisotropy of the cuprates does not affect the calculated T-variation of neither Hall coefficient nor \rho, but only rescale their magnitudes by factors depending on combinations of m_ab and m_c.Comment: 4th International Conference Fundamental Problems of High-Temperature Superconductivity, Moscow-Zvenigorod (October 3-7, 2011) Submitted to J. Supercond. Nov. Magn.: after revision. Extension for Supercond. Sci. Technol. 24 075026 (2011), DOI: 10.1088/0953-2048/24/7/075026 Contains: 2 pages, 3 figure

Terahertz Spectroscopy of Gas Absorption Using the Superconducting Flux-Flow Oscillator as an Active Source and the Superconducting Integrated Receiver

We report on the first implementation of a terahertz (THz) source based on a Josephson flux-flow oscillator (FFO) that radiates to open space. The excellent performance of this source and its maturity for practical applications has been demonstrated by the spectroscopy of gas absorption. To study the radiated power, we used a bolometric detection method and additionally calibrated the power by means of pumping the superconductor–insulator–superconductor (SIS) junction, integrated on a single chip with the FFO. For calibration, we developed a program using the SIS-detected power calculations in accordance with the Tien and Gordon model. The power emitted to open space is estimated to be from fractions of µW to several µW in the wide region from 0.25 THz up to 0.75 THz for different designs, with a maximum power of 3.3 µW at 0.34 THz. Next, we used a gas cell and a heterodyne superconducting integrated receiver to trace the absorption lines of water and ammonia with a spectral resolution better than 100 kHz. Our experiment for gas absorption is the first demonstration of the applicability of the FFO as an external active source for different tasks, such as THz spectroscopy, near-field THz imaging and microscopy