Abstract

A heat trap, also called a Winston cone or compound parabolic concentrator, has been designed and built to serve as the beam defining optic for the far-infrared absolute spectrophotometer on the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite. This quasi-optical multimode antenna is coupled to a flared entrance section shaped like a trumpet bell to reduce response to off-axis radiation. The antenna has very low sidelobes over a two-decade frequency range from 1 to 100 cm⁻¹. Fabrication is described, and stray light data are presented and compared to theory. A novel optical figure test for concentrators is presented.

© 1986 Optical Society of America

Horn antenna with low sidelobe response for observations of diffuse celestial radiation

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