Heterodyne Technology in Submillimetre Astronomy: Towards Implementation in Herschel

摘要: In this chapter, we introduce the heterodyne technique and its early history. The Herschel-HIFI instrument involved two important technical lineages that were just emerging at time of initial mission proposal to ESA in 1982: superconducting mixers local oscillator (LO) devices. We review 15 years progress development carried out advance these technologies before HIFI project began 1997. status performance are reviewed, HIFI’s huge improvements sensitivity broad frequency coverage, securing both robustness reliability, which mandatory for a successful space mission, discussed. Like other Herschel instruments, represents powerful example how enabling technology programmatic opportunities can fruitfully interact project.