A Low-Insertion Loss Cryogenic Edge-Mode Isolator With 18 GHz Bandwidth

Cryogenic isolators play an important role in low-noise receiver systems widely employed in millimeter and submillimeter telescopes. To enable a significantly wider Intermediate Frequency (IF) bandwidth, there is strong demand for a wideband, low-loss isolator in modern facilities like the Submillim...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lingzhen Zeng, Cheuk-Yu Edward Tong, Scott N. Paine
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2023-01-01
Series:IEEE Journal of Microwaves
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10230855/
Description
Summary:Cryogenic isolators play an important role in low-noise receiver systems widely employed in millimeter and submillimeter telescopes. To enable a significantly wider Intermediate Frequency (IF) bandwidth, there is strong demand for a wideband, low-loss isolator in modern facilities like the Submillimeter Array (SMA) and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). In this article, we present a novel cryogenic edge-mode isolator that incorporates an innovative circuit design. Operating at a cryogenic temperature of 4 K, this isolator delivers unprecedented performance, covering a frequency range from 4 GHz to 22 GHz. It exhibits insertion loss of less than 1 dB, together with return loss below -15 dB. In particular, it provides an isolation better than 17 dB across most of the band, a significant improvement over the previous generation of edge-mode isolators. This new isolator design is suitable for a wide array of low-noise receiver applications, from radio-astronomy to quantum computing.
ISSN:2692-8388