A high-precision tunable millimeter-wave photonic LO reference for the ALMA telescope

Abstract

The Atacama Large Millimeter Array is a radio telescope array of 66 antennas designed for high performance scientific imaging, covering a frequency range of 27–950 GHz. Each antenna has a front end with ten receiving bands, and each band has a local oscillator which is synchronized between all antennas. We describe a high precision tunable millimeter-wave photonic local oscillator reference system, which is used as the synchronizing reference for all ten bands on each receiver.