Abstract: The work presents the result of development of the NbN superconducting hot-electron-bolometer (HEB) mixer. The sensitive element of the mixer is directly coupled to mid-IR radiation, and doesn’t have planar metallic antenna. Investigations of noise characteristics of NbN HEB mixer were performed at the frequency 28.4 THz (λ = 10.6 µm) by using gas-discharge CW CO2-laser without consideration of optical and electrical losses in the heterodyne receiver. The noise temperature of NbN HEB mixer with the size of the sensitive element 10 µm × 10 µm was 2320 K (~ 1.5hν/kB) at the heterodyne frequency of 28.4 THz. The noise temperature was determined by measuring the Y-factor taking into account the term which describes fluctuations of zero-point oscillations in accordance with the fluctuation-dissipation theorem of Calle-Welton. Isothermal method was used to estimate the absorbed heterodyne radiation power which was 9 µW at the optimal operating point for the minimum noise temperature of NbN HEB mixer.

Abstract: We present the results of direct measurements of the temperature resolution of an HEB receiver operating at 810 GHz, in both continuum and spectroscopic modes. In the continuum mode, the input of the receiver was switched between black bodies with different physical temperatures. With a system noise temperature of around 1100 K, the receiver was able to resolve loads which differed in temperature by about 1 K over an integration time of 5 seconds. This resolution is significantly worse than the value of 0.07 K given by the radiometer equation. In the spectroscopic mode, a gas cell filled with carbonyl sulphide (OCS) gas was used and the emission line at 813.3537060 GHz was measured using the receiver in conjunction with a digital spectrometer. From the observed spectra, we determined that the measurement uncertainty of the equivalent emission temperature was 2.8 K for an integration time of 0.25 seconds and a spectral resolution of 12 MHz, compared to a 1.4 K temperature resolution given by the radiometer equation. This relative improvement is due to the fact that at short integration times the contribution from 1/f noise and drift are less dominant. In both modes, the temperature resolution was improved by about 40% with the use of a feedback loop which adjusted the level of an injected microwave radiation to maintain a constant operating current of the HEB mixer. This stabilization scheme has proved to be very effective to keep the temperature resolution of the HEB receiver to close to the theoretical value given by the radiometer equation.

Abstract: Plasmons, collective oscillations of electron systems, can couple light and electric current, and thus can be used to create compact photodetectors, radiation mixers, and spectrometers. Despite the effort, it has proven challenging to implement plasmonic devices operating at THz frequencies. The material capable to meet this challenge is graphene as it supports long-lived electrically-tunable plasmons. In this talk, we will demonstrate plasmon-assisted resonant detection of THz radiation by antenna-coupled graphene FETs that act as both rectifying elements and plasmonic Fabry-Perot cavities amplifying the photoresponse. We will show that by varying the plasmon velocity using gate voltage, our detectors can be tuned between multiple resonant modes, a functionality that we apply to measure plasmons' wavelength and lifetime in graphene as well as to probe collective modes in its moire minibands. Our approach offers a convenient tool for further plasmonic research that is often difficult under non-ambient conditions and promises a viable route for various THz applications. We acknowledge Leverhulme Trust, Russian Science Foundation Grants N18-72-00234 and 17-72-30036, Russian Foundation for Basic Research No. 18-57-06001 and 16-29-03402.