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Gershenzon, E. M., Gershenzon, M. E., Gol'tsman, G. N., Semenov, A. D., & Sergeev, A. V. (1984). Heating of electrons in a superconductor in the resistive state by electromagnetic radiation. Sov. Phys. JETP, 59(2), 442–450.
Abstract: The effect of heating of electrons relative to phonons is observed and investigated in a superconducting film that is made resistive by current and by an external magnetic field. The effect is manifested by an increase of the film resistance under the influence of the electromagnetic radiation, and is not selective in the frequency band 10^10-10^15 Hz. The independence of the effect of frequency under conditions of strong scattering by static defects is attributed to the decisive role of electron-electron collisions in the distribution function. The experimentally obtained characteristic time of resistance variation near the superconducting transition corresponds to the relaxation time of the order parameter, while at lower temperatures and fields it corresponds to the time of the inelastic electron-phonon interaction.
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Gershenzon, E. M., Gershenzon, M. E., Gol'tsman, G. N., Semyonov, A. D., & Sergeev, A. V. (1984). Heating of electrons in superconductor in the resistive state due to electromagnetic radiation. Solid State Communications, 50(3), 207–212.
Abstract: The effect of heating electrons with respect to phonons in a thin superconducting film driven into the resistive state by the current and the external magnetic field has been observed and investigated. This effect caused by the electromagnetic radiation is manifested in the increased resistance of the film and is not selective over the frequency range from 1010 to 1015 Hz. That the effect is frequency independent under the conditions of strong electron scattering caused by static defects is explained by the decisive role of electron -electron collisions in forming the distribution function. The characteristic time of resistance change, obtained experimentally, corresponds to the relaxation time of the order parameter near the superconducting transition and to the relaxation time of the nonelastic electron-phonon interaction at lower temperatures and in lower magnetic fields.
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Murphy, A., Semenov, A., Korneev, A., Korneeva, Y., Gol'tsman, G., & Bezryadin, A. (2015). Three temperature regimes in superconducting photon detectors: quantum, thermal and multiple phase-slips as generators of dark counts. Sci. Rep., 5, 10174 (1 to 10).
Abstract: We perform measurements of the switching current distributions of three w approximately 120 nm wide, 4 nm thick NbN superconducting strips which are used for single-photon detectors. These strips are much wider than the diameter of the vortex cores, so they are classified as quasi-two-dimensional (quasi-2D). We discover evidence of macroscopic quantum tunneling by observing the saturation of the standard deviation of the switching distributions at temperatures around 2 K. We analyze our results using the Kurkijarvi-Garg model and find that the escape temperature also saturates at low temperatures, confirming that at sufficiently low temperatures, macroscopic quantum tunneling is possible in quasi-2D strips and can contribute to dark counts observed in single photon detectors. At the highest temperatures the system enters a multiple phase-slip regime. In this range single phase-slips are unable to produce dark counts and the fluctuations in the switching current are reduced.
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Beck, M., Rousseau, I., Klammer, M., Leiderer, P., Mittendorff, M., Winnerl, S., et al. (2013). Transient increase of the energy gap of superconducting NbN thin films excited by resonant narrow-band terahertz pulses. Phys. Rev. Lett., 110(26), 267003 (1 to 5).
Abstract: Observations of radiation-enhanced superconductivity have thus far been limited to a few type-I superconductors (Al, Sn) excited at frequencies between the inelastic scattering rate and the superconducting gap frequency 2Delta/h. Utilizing intense, narrow-band, picosecond, terahertz pulses, tuned to just below and above 2Delta/h of a BCS superconductor NbN, we demonstrate that the superconducting gap can be transiently increased also in a type-II dirty-limit superconductor. The effect is particularly pronounced at higher temperatures and is attributed to radiation induced nonthermal electron distribution persisting on a 100 ps time scale.
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Korneev, A., Divochiy, A., Tarkhov, M., Minaeva, O., Seleznev, V., Kaurova, N., et al. (2008). New advanced generation of superconducting NbN-nanowire single-photon detectors capable of photon number resolving. In J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. (Vol. 97, 012307 (1 to 6)).
Abstract: We present our latest generation of ultrafast superconducting NbN single-photon detectors (SSPD) capable of photon-number resolving (PNR). We have developed, fabricated and tested a multi-sectional design of NbN nanowire structures. The novel SSPD structures consist of several meander sections connected in parallel, each having a resistor connected in series. The novel SSPDs combine 10 μm × 10 μm active areas with a low kinetic inductance and PNR capability. That resulted in a significantly reduced photoresponse pulse duration, allowing for GHz counting rates. The detector's response magnitude is directly proportional to the number of incident photons, which makes this feature easy to use. We present experimental data on the performances of the PNR SSPDs. The PNR SSPDs are perfectly suited for fibreless free-space telecommunications, as well as for ultrafast quantum cryptography and quantum computing.
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Bell, M., Kaurova, N., Divochiy, A., Gol'tsman, G., Bird, J., Sergeev, A., et al. (2007). On the nature of resistive transition in disordered superconducting nanowires. IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond., 17(2), 267–270.
Abstract: Hot-electron single-photon counters based on long superconducting nanowires are starting to become popular in optical and infrared technologies due to their ultimately high sensitivity and very high response speed. We investigate intrinsic fluctuations in long NbN nanowires in the temperature range of 4.2 K-20 K, i.e. above and below the superconducting transition. These fluctuations are responsible for fluctuation resistivity and also determine the noise in practical devices. Measurements of the fluctuation resistivity were performed at low current densities and also in external magnetic fields up to 5 T. Above the BCS critical temperature T co the resistivity is well described by the Aslamazov-Larkin (AL) theory for two-dimensional samples. Below T co the measured resistivity is in excellent agreement with the Langer-Ambegaokar-McCumber-Halperin (LAMH) theory developed for one-dimensional superconductors. Despite that our nanowires of 100 nm width are two-dimensional with respect to the coherence length, our analysis shows that at relatively low current densities the one-dimensional LAMH mechanism based on thermally induced phase slip centers dominates over the two-dimensional mechanism related to unbinding of vortex-antivortex pairs below the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition.
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Marksteiner, M., Divochiy, A., Sclafani, M., Haslinger, P., Ulbricht, H., Korneev, A., et al. (2009). A superconducting NbN detector for neutral nanoparticles. Nanotechnol., 20(45), 455501.
Abstract: We present a proof-of-principle study of superconducting single photon detectors (SSPD) for the detection of individual neutral molecules/nanoparticles at low energies. The new detector is applied to characterize a laser desorption source for biomolecules and allows retrieval of the arrival time distribution of a pulsed molecular beam containing the amino acid tryptophan, the polypeptide gramicidin as well as insulin, myoglobin and hemoglobin. We discuss the experimental evidence that the detector is actually sensitive to isolated neutral particles.
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Chulkova, G., Milostnaya, I., Tarkhov, M., Korneev, A., Minaeva, O., Voronov, B., et al. (2006). Superconducting single-photon nanostructured detectors for advanced optical applications. In Proc. Symposium on Photonics Technologies for 7th Framework Program (Vol. 400).
Abstract: We present superconducting single-photon detectors (SSPDs) based on NbN thin-film nanostructures and operated at liquid helium temperatures. The SSPDs are made of ultrathin NbN films (2.5-4 nm thick, Tc= 9-11K) as meander-shaped nanowires covering the area of 10× 10 µm2. Our detectors are operated at the temperature well below the critical temperature Tc and are DC biased by a current Ib close to the meander critical current Ic. The operation principle of the detector is based on the use of the resistive region in a narrow ultra-thin superconducting stripe upon the absorption of an incident photon. The developed devices demonstrate high sensitivity and response speed in a broadband range from UV to mid-IR (up to 6 µm), making them very attractive for advanced optical technologies, which require efficient detectors of single quanta and low-density optical radiation.
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Kitaygorsky, J., Komissarov, I., Jukna, A., Pan, D., Minaeva, O., Kaurova, N., et al. (2007). Dark counts in nanostructured nbn superconducting single-photon detectors and bridges. IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond., 17(2), 275–278.
Abstract: We present our studies on dark counts, observed as transient voltage pulses, in current-biased NbN superconducting single-photon detectors (SSPDs), as well as in ultrathin (~4 nm), submicrometer-width (100 to 500 nm) NbN nanobridges. The duration of these spontaneous voltage pulses varied from 250 ps to 5 ns, depending on the device geometry, with the longest pulses observed in the large kinetic-inductance SSPD structures. Dark counts were measured while the devices were completely isolated (shielded by a metallic enclosure) from the outside world, in a temperature range between 1.5 and 6 K. Evidence shows that in our two-dimensional structures the dark counts are due to the depairing of vortex-antivortex pairs caused by the applied bias current. Our results shed some light on the vortex dynamics in 2D superconductors and, from the applied point of view, on intrinsic performance of nanostructured SSPDs.
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Smirnov, K. V., Vakhtomin, Y. B., Divochiy, A. V., Ozhegov, R. V., Pentin, I. V., & Gol'tsman, G. N. (2010). Infrared and terahertz detectors on basis of superconducting nanostructures. In IEEE (Ed.), Microwave and Telecom. Technol. (CriMiCo), 20th Int. Crimean Conf. (pp. 823–824).
Abstract: Results of development of single-photon receiving systems of visible, infrared and terahertz range based on thin-film superconducting nanostructures are presented. The receiving systems are produced on the basis of superconducting nanostructures, which function by means of hot-electron phenomena.
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