Tret’yakov, I. V., Ryabchun, S. A., Kaurova, N. S., Larionov, P. A., Lobastova, A. A., Voronov, B. M., et al. (2010). Optimum absorbed heterodyne power for superconducting NbN hot-electron bolometer mixer. Tech. Phys. Lett., 36(12), 1103–1105.
Abstract: Absorbed heterodyne power has been measured in a low-noise broadband hot-electron bolometer (HEB) mixer for the terahertz range, operating on the effect of electron heating in the resistive state of an ultrathin superconducting NbN film. It is established that the optimum absorbed heterodyne power for the HEB mixer operating at 2.5 THz is about 100 nW.
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Korneev, A., Korneeva, Y., Florya, I., Elezov, M., Manova, N., Tarkhov, M., et al. (2011). Recent advances in superconducting NbN single-photon detector development. In Proc. SPIE (Vol. 8072, 807202 (1 to 10)).
Abstract: Superconducting single-photon detector (SSPD) is a planar nanostructure patterned from 4-nm-thick NbN film deposited on sapphire substrate. The sensitive element of the SSPD is 100-nm-wide NbN strip. The device is operated at liquid helium temperature. Absorption of a photon leads to a local suppression of superconductivity producing subnanosecond-long voltage pulse. In infrared (at 1550 nm and longer wavelengths) SSPD outperforms avalanche photodiodes in terms of detection efficiency (DE), dark counts rate, maximum counting rate and timing jitter. Efficient single-mode fibre coupling of the SSPD enabled its usage in many applications ranging from single-photon sources research to quantum cryptography. Recently we managed to improve the SSPD performance and measured 25% detection efficiency at 1550 nm wavelength and dark counts rate of 10 s-1. We also improved photon-number resolving SSPD (PNR-SSPD) which realizes a spatial multiplexing of incident photons enabling resolving of up to 4 simultaneously absorbed photons. Another improvement is the increase of the photon absorption using a λ/4 microcavity integrated with the SSPD. And finally in our strive to increase the DE at longer wavelengths we fabricated SSPD with the strip almost twice narrower compared to the standard 100 nm and demonstrated that in middle infrared (about 3 μm wavelength) these devices have DE several times higher compared to the traditional SSPDs.
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Manova, N. N., Korneeva, Y. P., Korneev, A. A., Slysz, W., Voronov, B. M., & Gol'tsman, G. N. (2011). Superconducting NbN single-photon detector integrated with quarter-wave resonator. Tech. Phys. Lett., 37(5), 469–471.
Abstract: The spectral dependence of the quantum efficiency of superconducting NbN single-photon detectors integrated with quarter-wave resonators based on Si3N4, SiO2, and SiO layers has been studied.
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Dauler, E., Kerman, A., Robinson, B., Yang, J., Voronov, B., Goltsman, G., et al. (2009). Photon-number-resolution with sub-30-ps timing using multi-element superconducting nanowire single photon detectors. J. Modern Opt., 56(2), 364–373.
Abstract: A photon-number-resolving detector based on a four-element superconducting nanowire single photon detector is demonstrated to have sub-30-ps resolution in measuring the arrival time of individual photons. This detector can be used to characterize the photon statistics of non-pulsed light sources and to mitigate dead-time effects in high-speed photon counting applications. Furthermore, a 25% system detection efficiency at 1550 nm was demonstrated, making the detector useful for both low-flux source characterization and high-speed photon-counting and quantum communication applications. The design, fabrication and testing of this detector are described, and a comparison between the measured and theoretical performance is presented.
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Marsili, F., Bitauld, D., Fiore, A., Gaggero, A., Leoni, R., Mattioli, F., et al. (2009). Superconducting parallel nanowire detector with photon number resolving functionality. J. Modern Opt., 56(2-3), 334–344.
Abstract: We present a new photon number resolving detector (PNR), the Parallel Nanowire Detector (PND), which uses spatial multiplexing on a subwavelength scale to provide a single electrical output proportional to the photon number. The basic structure of the PND is the parallel connection of several NbN superconducting nanowires (100 nm-wide, few nm-thick), folded in a meander pattern. Electrical and optical equivalents of the device were developed in order to gain insight on its working principle. PNDs were fabricated on 3-4 nm thick NbN films grown on sapphire (substrate temperature TS=900C) or MgO (TS=400C) substrates by reactive magnetron sputtering in an Ar/N2 gas mixture. The device performance was characterized in terms of speed and sensitivity. The photoresponse shows a full width at half maximum (FWHM) as low as 660ps. PNDs showed counting performance at 80 MHz repetition rate. Building the histograms of the photoresponse peak, no multiplication noise buildup is observable and a one photon quantum efficiency can be estimated to be QE=3% (at 700 nm wavelength and 4.2 K temperature). The PND significantly outperforms existing PNR detectors in terms of simplicity, sensitivity, speed, and multiplication noise.
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