Sidorova, M., Semenov, A. D., Hübers, H. - W., Ilin, K., Siegel, M., Charaev, I., et al. (2020). Electron energy relaxation in disordered superconducting NbN films. Phys. Rev. B, 102(5), 054501 (1 to 15).
Abstract: We report on the inelastic-scattering rate of electrons on phonons and relaxation of electron energy studied by means of magnetoconductance, and photoresponse, respectively, in a series of strongly disordered superconducting NbN films. The studied films with thicknesses in the range from 3 to 33 nm are characterized by different Ioffe-Regel parameters but an almost constant product qTl (qT is the wave vector of thermal phonons and l is the elastic mean free path of electrons). In the temperature range 14–30 K, the electron-phonon scattering rates obey temperature dependencies close to the power law 1/τe−ph∼Tn with the exponents n≈3.2–3.8. We found that in this temperature range τe−ph and n of studied films vary weakly with the thickness and square resistance. At 10 K electron-phonon scattering times are in the range 11.9–17.5 ps. The data extracted from magnetoconductance measurements were used to describe the experimental photoresponse with the two-temperature model. For thick films, the photoresponse is reasonably well described without fitting parameters, however, for thinner films, the fit requires a smaller heat capacity of phonons. We attribute this finding to the reduced density of phonon states in thin films at low temperatures. We also show that the estimated Debye temperature in the studied NbN films is noticeably smaller than in bulk material.
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Baeva, E. M., Sidorova, M. V., Korneev, A. A., Smirnov, K. V., Divochy, A. V., Morozov, P. V., et al. (2018). Thermal properties of NbN single-photon detectors. Phys. Rev. Applied, 10(6), 064063 (1 to 8).
Abstract: We investigate thermal properties of a NbN single-photon detector capable of unit internal detection efficiency. Using an independent calibration of the coupling losses, we determine the absolute optical power absorbed by the NbN film and, via resistive superconductor thermometry, the temperature dependence of the thermal resistance Z(T) of the NbN film. In principle, this approach permits simultaneous measurement of the electron-phonon and phonon-escape contributions to the energy relaxation, which in our case is ambiguous because of the similar temperature dependencies. We analyze Z(T) with a two-temperature model and impose an upper bound on the ratio of electron and phonon heat capacities in NbN, which is surprisingly close to a recent theoretical lower bound for the same quantity in similar devices.
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Sidorova, M. V., Kozorezov, A. G., Semenov, A. V., Korneeva, Y. P., Mikhailov, M. Y., Devizenko, A. Y., et al. (2018). Nonbolometric bottleneck in electron-phonon relaxation in ultrathin WSi films. Phys. Rev. B, 97(18), 184512 (1 to 13).
Abstract: We developed the model of the internal phonon bottleneck to describe the energy exchange between the acoustically soft ultrathin metal film and acoustically rigid substrate. Discriminating phonons in the film into two groups, escaping and nonescaping, we show that electrons and nonescaping phonons may form a unified subsystem, which is cooled down only due to interactions with escaping phonons, either due to direct phonon conversion or indirect sequential interaction with an electronic system. Using an amplitude-modulated absorption of the sub-THz radiation technique, we studied electron-phonon relaxation in ultrathin disordered films of tungsten silicide. We found an experimental proof of the internal phonon bottleneck. The experiment and simulation based on the proposed model agree well, resulting in τe−ph∼140–190 ps at TC=3.4K, supporting the results of earlier measurements by independent techniques.
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Baeva, E., Sidorova, M., Korneev, A., & Goltsman, G. (2018). Precise measurement of the thermal conductivity of superconductor. In Proc. AIP Conf. (Vol. 1936, 020003 (1 to 4)).
Abstract: Measuring the thermal properties such as the heat capacity provide information about intrinsic mechanisms operated inside. In general, the ratio between electron and phonon specific heat Ce/Cp shows how the absorbed energy shared between electron and phonon subsystems. In this work we make estimations for amplitude-modulated absorption of THz radiation technique for investigation of the ratio Ce/Cp in superconducting Niobium Nitride (NbN) at T = Tc. Our results indicates that experimentally the frequency of modulation has to be extra large to extract the quantity. We perform a new technique allowed to work at low frequency with accurately measurement of absorbed power.
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Sidorova, M., Semenov, A., Korneev, A., Chulkova, G., Korneeva, Y., Mikhailov, M., et al. (2018). Electron-phonon relaxation time in ultrathin tungsten silicon film. arXiv:1607.07321v1 [physics.ins-det].
Abstract: Using amplitude-modulated absorption of sub-THz radiation (AMAR) method, we studied electron-phonon relaxation in thin disordered films of tungsten silicide. We found a response time ~ 800 ps at critical temperature Tc = 3.4 K, which scales as minus 3 in the temperature range from 1.8 to 3.4 K. We discuss mechanisms, which can result in a strong phonon bottle-neck effect in a few nanometers thick film and yield a substantial difference between the measured time, characterizing response at modulation frequency, and the inelastic electron-phonon relaxation time. We estimate the electron-phonon relaxation time to be in the range ~ 100-200 ps at 3.4 K.
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