Total power millimeter-wave spectrometer for measurements of dust opacity at cryogenic temperatures

A highly sensitive total power millimeter-wave spectrometer has been built to investigate the opacity of important interstellar-dust analogues in the 10-300 K temperature range. The key elements of the spectrometer are a frequency agile synthesizer followed by a microwave amplifier and a subsequent frequency multiplier. In a first step, the frequency range of 72-120 GHz is covered by the spectrometer, and a room temperature Schottky detector is employed as a detector. A newly developed two channel (sample/reference) copper sample holder is cryogenically cooled for the 10-300 K range. Here we present the technical details of the spectrometer including examples of the obtained results. The analysis of these results will be published elsewhere.