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A horn-coupled millimetre-wave on-chip spectrometer based on lumped-element kinetic inductance detectors

Millimeter-wave is an important tool for general astrophysics and cosmology studies. Smart focal planes are needed to bridge the gap between high bandwidth continuum instruments operating on individual telescopes and high spectral and angular resolution interferometers. We have designed, fabricated, and tested an innovative on-chip spectrometer sensitive in the 85-110GHz range that contains 16 channels of 0.2 GHz width. This prototype spectrometer has a spectral resolution R = λ/Δλ ≈ 300. The device is polarization sensitive, with a cross-polarization of less than 1%.