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Laboratory evaluation of FINER completed

The integrated test of the full FINER system at NAOJ, including the warm optics, both front-end receivers, the local oscillators, the IF chain and the DRS4 spectrometers, has been completed. FINER is now being prepared for its journey to the LMT in Mexico.

Oct 16, 2026 1 min read
Laboratory evaluation of FINER completed
FINER papers presented at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2026

Two new papers on FINER are available on arXiv: the system development and preparations for first light (Taniguchi et al. 2026) and the 210–350 GHz wideband receiver (Kang et al. 2026).

Jul 3, 2026 1 min read
The FINER "periscope" is ready

The warm optics of FINER, a coupling optical mechanism that picks up the radio waves collected by the LMT and leads them to the FINER receiver, is ready. Tatsuya Takekoshi at Kitami Institute of Technology is finalizing its integration.

Jun 11, 2026 1 min read
FINER receiver used for a dark photon search (DOSUE-RR)

Before its shipment to the LMT, the FINER Band 6+7 receiver (210–350 GHz) is being used at NAOJ by DOSUE-RR, an experiment that searches for dark matter with radio waves. The team led by Okayama University, including Associate Professor Adachi, installed its own calibration and readout system on FINER and started the search for dark photons in the 0.9–1.4 meV mass range on 6 April 2026. See the announcement by Okayama University (in Japanese).

Apr 11, 2026 1 min read
We released the LMT/B4R Commissioning Report in 2024

We have released the LMT/B4R Commissioning and Science Observations Report in 2024. B4R is a 2-mm dual-polarization 2SB heterodyne receiver system (Kawabe et al. 2025, AJ, 170, 350; Yonetsu et al. 2025, arXiv:2511.21845) and the precursor of the FINER receiver system.

Oct 28, 2025 1 min read
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About FINER

FINER (Far-Infrared Nebular Emission Receiver) is a dual-polarization sideband-separating superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixer receiver for the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) in Mexico. By exploiting ALMA’s new wideband sensitivity upgrade (WSU) technology, FINER covers a wide range in radio frequencies from 120–350 GHz, with an instantaneous intermediate frequency (IF) of 4–20 GHz per sideband per polarization, providing 40% of ALMAʼs light-collecting area, a similar atmospheric transmittance to ALMA, and a 5 times wider bandwidth than the current ALMA, which offers the most sensitive spectral-scanning capability among millimeter and submillimeter telescopes in the northern hemisphere.

The laboratory integration and evaluation of the full FINER system were completed at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) in October 2026, and the system is being prepared for installation on the LMT. FINER is expected to come online in 2027.

The FINER project is supported by JSPS KAKENHI: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (S) 22H04939 (PI: Y. Tamura), Specially Promoted Research 24H00004 and International Leading Research 23K20035 (PI: K. Kohno), and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) 15H02073 (PI: R. Kawabe).

Team

PIs

  • Yoichi Tamura (Nagoya University)
  • Takeshi Sakai (The University of Electro-Communications)

Development Team

  • Masato Hagimoto (Nagoya University)
  • Shun Ishii (NAOJ)
  • Haoran Kang (NAOJ)
  • Ryohei Kawabe (NAOJ)
  • Takafumi Kojima (NAOJ)
  • Sho Masui (NAOJ)
  • Tac Nakajima (Suwa University of Science)
  • Tai Oshima (NAOJ)
  • Wenlei Shan (NAOJ)
  • Tatsuya Takekoshi (Kitami Institute of Technology)
  • Kunihiko Tanaka (Keio University)
  • Akio Taniguchi (Kitami Institute of Technology)

Science Team

  • Tom J.L.C. Bakx (Chalmers University of Technology)
  • Yoshinobu Fudamoto (Chiba University)
  • Yuichi Harikane (The University of Tokyo)
  • Takuya Hashimoto (University of Tsukuba)
  • Bunyo Hatsukade (NAOJ)
  • Akio K. Inoue (Waseda University)
  • Kotaro Kohno (The University of Tokyo)
  • Yuichi Matsuda (NAOJ)
  • Ken Mawatari (University of Tsukuba)
  • Kotomi Taniguchi (NAOJ)
  • Akiyoshi Tsujita (The University of Tokyo)
  • Hideki Umehata (Nagoya University)
  • Teppei Yonetsu (Osaka Metropolitan University)
  • Yuki Yoshimura (The University of Tokyo)

Contact

  • Yoichi Tamura
    • Department of Physics, Nagoya University
    • Email: ytamura (at) nagoya-u.jp