Lens Antenna Arrays for THz Superconducting HEB Mixers: A Review and a Metasurface Coupling Approach

Terahertz hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixers, which offer the highest sensitivity in the frequency range above 1.5 THz, are equipped on space observatories to detect the terahertz radiation emitted from the interstellar medium within galaxies. To increase the mapping speed, it is essential to develop large HEB mixer arrays. However, conventional quasi-optical coupling methods, including single large silicon lens approaches and silicon lens array approaches, suffer from the conflict of achieving high filling factor and uniform illumination on the HEB mixer array. This paper reviews the research progress on quasi-optical coupled HEB mixer arrays and proposes an innovative array coupling scheme to overcome the existing limitation. We designed a metasurface beam shaper based on the Gerchberg–Saxton algorithm and COMSOL simulation to transform an incoming Gaussian beam into a flattop beam in the focal plane, thereby forming uniform illumination for an antenna-coupled HEB mixer array. The metasurface is intended primarily for uniform local oscillator (LO) distribution across the array. The simulation of the metasurface beam shaper at 0.6 THz demonstrates a flattop beam with a flat region approximately 3 mm wide, and the intensity across this region varies by only 4.2%. The same simulation is also performed at 1.6 THz, and the flat region is 1.5 mm wide with a 5.5% intensity variation. This work demonstrates the feasibility of using a metasurface to convert a Gaussian beam into a flattop beam at terahertz frequencies as well as a pathway for array-level coupling schemes for HEB mixer arrays with high filling factor and uniform illumination.