TY  - CONF
AU  - Milostnaya, I.
AU  - Korneev, A.
AU  - Minaeva, O.
AU  - Rubtsova, I.
AU  - Slepneva, S.
AU  - Seleznev, V.
AU  - Chulkova, G.
AU  - Okunev, O.
AU  - Smirnov, K.
AU  - Voronov, B.
AU  - Gol’tsman, G.
AU  - Slysz, W.
AU  - Kitaygorsky, J.
AU  - Cross, A.
AU  - Pearlman, A.
AU  - Sobolewski, R.
A2  - Infrared Photoelectronics
ED  - Rogalski, A.
ED  - Dereniak, E. L.
ED  - Sizov, F. F.
PY  - 2005
DA  - 2005//
TI  - Superconducting nanostructured detectors capable of single photon counting of mid-infrared optical radiation
T2  - Proc. SPIE
BT  - Proc. SPIE
SP  - 59570A (1 to 9)
VL  - 5957
PB  - SPIE
KW  - SSPD
KW  - SNSPD
KW  - single-photon detectors
KW  - superconductors
KW  - superconducting
AB  - We report on our progress in research and development of ultrafast superconducting single-photon detectors (SSPDs) based on ultrathin NbN nanostructures. Our SSPDs were made of the 4-nm-thick NbN films with T[sub:c] 11 K, patterned as meander-shaped, 100-nm-wide strips, and covering an area of 10×10 μm[super:2]. The detectors exploit a combined detection mechanism, where upon a single-photon absorption, a hotspot of excited electrons and redistribution of the biasing supercurrent, jointly produce a picosecond voltage transient signal across the superconducting nanostripe. The SSPDs are typically operated at 4.2 K, but their sensitivity in the infrared radiation range can be significantly improved by lowering the operating temperature from 4.2 K to 2 K. When operated at 2 K, the SSPD quantum efficiency (QE) for visible light photons reaches 30-40%, which is the saturation value limited by the optical absorption of our 4-nm-thick NbN film. With the wavelength increase of the incident photons,the QE of SSPDs decreases significantly, but even at the wavelength of 6 μm, the detector is able to count single photons and exhibits QE of about 10[super:-2] %. The dark (false) count rate at 2 K is as low as 2x10[super:-4] s,[super:-1] which makes our detector essentially a background-limited sensor. The very low dark-count rate results in a noise equivalent power (NEP) below 10[super:-18 ]WHz[super:-1/2] for the mid-infrared range (6 μm). Further improvement of the SSPD performance in the mid-infrared range can be obtained by substituting NbN for another, lower-_T_[sub:c] materials with a narrow superconducting gap and low quasiparticles diffusivity. The use of such superconductors should shift the cutoff wavelength below 10 μm.
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1117/12.623767
DO  - 10.1117/12.623767
N1  - exported from refbase (https://db.rplab.ru/refbase/show.php?record=1458), last updated on Mon, 17 May 2021 11:30:29 -0500
ID  - Milostnaya_etal2005
ER  -