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Ryabchun, S., Tong, C. -yu E., Blundell, R., Kimberk, R., & Gol’tsman, G. (2006). Effect of microwave radiation on the stability of terahertz hot-electron bolometer mixers. In M. Anwar, A. J. DeMaria, & M. S. Shur (Eds.), Proc. SPIE (Vol. 6373, 63730J (1 to 5)). SPIE.
Abstract: We report our studies of the effect of microwave radiation, with a frequency much lower than that corresponding to the energy gap of the superconductor, on the performance of the NbN hot-electron bolometer (HEB) mixer incorporated into a THz heterodyne receiver. It is shown that exposing the HEB mixer to microwave radiation does not result in a significant rise of the receiver noise temperature and degradation of the mixer conversion gain so long as the level of microwave power is small compared to the local oscillator drive. Hence the injection of a small, but controlled amount of microwave radiation enables active compensation of local oscillator power and coupling fluctuations which can significantly degrade the stability of HEB mixer receivers.
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Baselmans, J. J. A., Baryshev, A., Reker, S. F., Hajenius, M., Gao, J. R., Klapwijk, T. M., et al. (2006). Influence of the direct response on the heterodyne sensitivity of hot electron bolometer mixers. J. Appl. Phys., 100(8), 084510 (1 to 7).
Abstract: We present a detailed experimental study of the direct detection effect in a small volume (0.15μm×1μm×3.5nm) quasioptical NbN phonon cooled hot electron bolometer mixer at 673GHz. We find that the small signal noise temperature, relevant for an astronomical observation, is 20% lower than the noise temperature obtained using 300 and 77K calibration loads. In a separate set of experiments we show that the direct detection effect is caused by a combination of bias current reduction when switching from the 77 to the 300K
load in combination with the bias current dependence of the receiver gain. The bias current dependence of the receiver gain is shown to be mainly caused by the current dependence of the mixer gain.
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Kooi, J. W., Baselmans, J. J. A., Baryshev, A., Schieder, R., Hajenius, M., Gao, J. R., et al. (2006). Stability of heterodyne terahertz receivers. J. Appl. Phys., 100(6), 064904 (1 to 9).
Abstract: In this paper we discuss the stability of heterodyne terahertz receivers based on small volume NbN phonon cooled hot electron bolometers (HEBs). The stability of these receivers can be broken down in two parts: the intrinsic stability of the HEB mixer and the stability of the local oscillator (LO) signal injection scheme. Measurements show that the HEB mixer stability is limited by gain fluctuations with a 1∕f spectral distribution. In a 60MHz noise bandwidth this results in an Allan variance stability time of ∼0.3s. Measurement of the spectroscopic Allan variance between two intermediate frequency (IF) channels results in a much longer Allan variance stability time, i.e., 3s between a 2.5 and a 4.7GHz channel, and even longer for more closely spaced channels. This implies that the HEB mixer 1∕f noise is strongly correlated across the IF band and that the correlation gets stronger the closer the IF channels are spaced. In the second part of the paper we discuss atmospheric and mechanical system stability requirements on the LO-mixer cavity path length. We calculate the mixer output noise fluctuations as a result of small perturbations of the LO-mixer standing wave, and find very stringent mechanical and atmospheric tolerance requirements for receivers operating at terahertz frequencies.
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Słysz, W., Węgrzecki, M., Bar, J., Grabiec, P., Górska, M., Zwiller, V., et al. (2006). Fiber-coupled single-photon detectors based on NbN superconducting nanostructures for practical quantum cryptography and photon-correlation studies. Appl. Phys. Lett., 88(26), 261113 (1 to 3).
Abstract: We have fabricated and tested a two-channel single-photon detector system based on two fiber-coupled superconducting single-photon detectors (SSPDs). Our best device reached the system quantum efficiency of 0.3% in the 1540-nm telecommunication wavelength with a fiber-to-detector coupling factor of about 30%. The photoresponse consisted of 2.5-ns-wide voltage pulses with a rise time of 250ps and timing jitter below 40ps. The overall system response time, measured as a second-order, photon cross-correlation function, was below 400ps. Our SSPDs operate at 4.2K inside a liquid-helium Dewar, but their optical fiber inputs and electrical outputs are at room temperature. Our two-channel detector system should find applications in practical quantum cryptography and in antibunching-type quantum correlation measurements.
The authors would like to thank Dr. Marc Currie for his assistance in early time-resolved photoresponse measurements and Professor Atac Imamoglu for his support. This work was supported by the Polish Ministry of Science under Project No. 3 T11B 052 26 (Warsaw), RFBR 03-02-17697 and INTAS 03-51-4145 grants (Moscow), CRDF Grant No. RE2-2531-MO-03 (Moscow), RE2-2529-MO-03 (Moscow and Rochester), and US AFOSR FA9550-04-1-0123 (Rochester). Additional funding was provided by the grants from the MIT Lincoln Laboratory and BBN Technologies Corp.
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Dauler, E. A., Kerman, A. J., Robinson, B. S., Yang, J. K. W., Voronov, B. M., Gol’tsman, G. N., et al. (2006). Achieving high counting rates in superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors. In CLEO/QELS (JTuD3 (1 to 2)). Optical Society of America.
Abstract: Kinetic inductance is determined to be the primary limitation to the counting rate of superconducting nanowire single-photon counters. Approaches for overcoming this limitation will be discussed.
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