Intense development of nanobolometers has taken place for well more than a decade with the aim to reach noise equivalent power NEP = 10e-20 W/rtHz. Furthermore, observation of single photons at increasingly long wavelengths is a long-standing effort. We present a microwave nanobolometer based on superconductor/normal-metal/superconductor Josephson junctions. Using positive electrothermal...
Real-time video rate imaging and automatic recognition of threats and contraband items that were concealed beneath layers of clothing on moving passengers was recently demonstrated with a prototype passive sub-mm imaging system at Cardiff Airport in the UK. The passengers did not have to divest their outer clothing layers and the instrument was able to distinguish between threat and non-threat...
Superconducting Nanostrip Single-Photon Detectors (SNSPDs) are promising devices in many fields ranging from single-photon source characterization to optical communication and quantum cryptography. An important feature of SNSPDs is their low dark count rate (DCR), that increases close to the critical current where the detection efficiency is higher. In such a region DCR is dominated by a...
Granular aluminum is an intriguing superconducting material, which has recently been receiving increasing attention in the superconducting quantum bits (qubits) and detectors communities. Among its key features are a tunable kinetic inductance up to nH/sq, amenable nonlinearity, and low microwave frequency losses [1,2,3]. Furthermore, quasiparticle relaxation times on the order of ~s have been...
Superconducting single-photon detectors have become the preferred technology for applications that require high detection efficiency, ultrafast timing performance and low noise for wide spectral sensitivity spanning UV to IR spectrum. The wide range of applications such as fundamental tests of quantum mechanics, fluorescence microscopy, optical communication and quantum computing, also...
Neutrinos continue to be a source of scientific wonder in nuclear physics, particle physics, and cosmology. Although much has been learned about the properties of neutrinos, much still pleads for more experimental investigation. The measurement of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering (CENNS) has been a holy grail in neutrino physics since its prediction almost 40 years ago, and has now...
The high sensitivity requirements set by future Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) instruments are pushing the current technologies to produce highly performant focal plane arrays with thousands of detectors. The coupling of the detectors to the telescope optics is a challenging task. Current implemented solutions include phased-array antenna coupled detectors, platelet horn arrays and...
We describe the in$-$flight performance of the horn$-$coupled Lumped Element Kinetic Inductance Detector arrays of the OLIMPO balloon-borne experiments. These arrays have been designed to match the spectral bands of OLIMPO: 150, 250, 350, and 460 GHz. They have been operated at 0.3 K and at an altitude of 37.8 km during the July 2018 stratospheric flight of the OLIMPO payload.
During the first...
QUBIC (Q & U Bolometric Interferometer for Cosmology) is an international ground-based experiment dedicated in the measurement of the polarized fluctuations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). It is based on bolometric interferometry, an original detection technique which combine the immunity to systematic effects of an interferometer with the sensitivity of low temperature incoherent...
We developed a neutron transmission imager based on a superconducting current-biased kinetic inductance detector (CB-KID). The CB-KID comprises X and Y meanderlines and a 10B conversion layer for neutrons. A 4He or 7Li ion from the 10B(n, α)7Li reaction creates two hot spots in both the X and Y meanders. A pair of electromagnetic-wave pulses of opposite polarities propagate toward the ends of...
Detection of single photon or small number of photons is a key technology to bring about a breakthrough to optical probes for delicate biological samples, in the bio-research and the bio-industry alike. Optical transition edge sensor (optical TES) is one of the most promising single photon detectors for such applications, with its array of features including; broadband sensitivity which ranges...
This presentation shows applications of superconducting tunnel junctions (STJ) cryodetection in heavy ion mass spectrometry (HIMS). STJs have 100% detection efficiency at all m/z’s including those with MegaDalton molecular weights (MW) as the signal output is independent of ion velocity. STJs also allow the determination of ion energy deposited into the detector which can be used for charge...
Photodetection plays a key role in basic science and technology, with exquisite performance having been achieved down to the single photon level. Further improvements in photodetectors would open new possibilities across a broad range of scientific disciplines, and enable new types of applications. However, it is still unclear what is possible in terms of ultimate performance, and what...
Artificial atoms based on superconducting qubits can be used to perform quantum non-demolition measurements of signal photons in microwave cavity detectors of low mass dark matter waves. By measuring only the photon wave's amplitude while remaining insensitive to the conjugate phase observable, these sensors evade the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and exhibit noise levels far below those...
Due to its extremely low background pressure and its cryogenic environment, the Cryogenic Storage Ring CSR at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg allows to prepare and store molecular ions with an energy of up to 300keV per unit charge in their rotational and vibrational ground state. This enables studies on electron-ion interactions such as dissociative recombination or...
By analyzing experiments on thin-film resonators of NbSi and TiN, we elucidate a decoherence mechanism at work in disordered superconductors. This decoherence is caused by charged Two Level Systems (TLS) which couple to the conduction electrons in the BCS ground state, inducing fluctuations of the kinetic inductance. Standard theories of mesoscopic disordered conductors are used to describe...
