A new receiver for the Onsala 20 m antenna with the possibility of being equipped with 3 mm and 4 mm bands has been built and the 3 mm channel has been commissioned during the Spring 2014. For single-dish operation, the receiver uses an innovative onsource/off-source optical switch. In combination with additional optical components and within the same optical layout, the switch provides two calibration loads (for the 3 mm and 4 mm channels), sideband rejection measurement, and tuning possibilities. The optical layout of the receiver employs all cold (4 K) offset elliptical mirrors for both channels, whereas the on-off switch employs flat mirrors only. The 3 mm channel employs a sideband separation (2SB) dual polarization receiver with orthomode transducer (OMT), 4-8 GHz intermediate frequency (IF), x 2pol x upper and lower sidebands (USB + LSB). The cryostat has four optical windows made of high density polyethylene (HDPE) with anti-reflection corrugations, two for the signal and two for each frequency band cold load. The cryostat uses a two-stage cryocooler produced by Sumitomo HI RDK 408D2 with anti-vibration suspension of the cold-head to minimize impact of the vibrations on the receiver stability. The local oscillator (LO) system is based on a Gunn oscillator with a phase lock loop (PLL) and four mechanical tuners for broadband operation, providing independently tunable LO power for each polarization. This paper provides a technical description of the receiver and its technology and could be useful for instrumentation engineers and observers using the Onsala 20 m telescope.

In this paper, we report on an optical tolerance analysis of the submillimeter atmospheric multi-beam limb sounder, STEAMR. Physical optics and ray-tracing methods were used to quantify and separate errors in beam pointing and distortion due to reflector misalignment and primary reflector surface deformations. Simulations were performed concurrently with the manufacturing of a multi-beam demonstrator of the relay optical system which shapes and images the beams to their corresponding receiver feed horns. Results from Monte Carlo simulations show that the inserts used for reflector mounting should be positioned with an overall accuracy better than 100 m ( 1/10 wavelength). Analyses of primary reflector surface deformations show that a deviation of magnitude 100 m can be tolerable before deployment, whereas the corresponding variations should be less than 30 m during operation. The most sensitive optical elements in terms of misalignments are found near the focal plane. This localized sensitivity is attributed to the off-axis nature of the beams at this location. Post-assembly mechanical measurements of the reflectors in the demonstrator show that alignment better than 50 m could be obtained.

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In this paper, we present a novel technique for the removal of astigmatism in submillimeter-wave optical systems through employment of a specific combination of so-called astigmatic off-axis reflectors. This technique treats an orthogonally astigmatic beam using skew Gaussian beam analysis, from which an anastigmatic imaging network is derived. The resultant beam is considered truly stigmatic, with all Gaussian beam parameters in the orthogonal directions being matched. This is thus considered an improvement over previous techniques wherein a beam corrected for astigmatism has only the orthogonal beam amplitude radii matched, with phase shift and phase radius of curvature not considered. This technique is computationally efficient, negating the requirement for computationally intensive numerical analysis of shaped reflector surfaces. The required optical surfaces are also relatively simple to implement compared to such numerically optimized shaped surfaces. This technique is implemented in this work as part of the complete optics train for the STEAMR antenna. The STEAMR instrument is envisaged as a mutli-beam limb sounding instrument operating at submillimeter wavelengths. The antenna optics arrangement for this instrument uses multiple off-axis reflectors to control the incident radiation and couple them to their corresponding receiver feeds. An anastigmatic imaging network is successfully implemented into an optical model of this antenna, and the resultant design ensures optimal imaging of the beams to the corresponding feed horns. This example also addresses the challenges of imaging in multi-beam antenna systems.

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