Fluctuations in the electron system of a superconductor exposed to a photon flux

被引:100
作者
de Visser, P. J. [1 ,2 ]
Baselmans, J. J. A. [1 ]
Bueno, J. [1 ]
Llombart, N. [3 ]
Klapwijk, T. M. [2 ]
机构
[1] SRON, Netherlands Inst Space Res, NL-3584 CA Utrecht, Netherlands
[2] Delft Univ Technol, Fac Sci Appl, Kavli Inst NanoSci, NL-2628 CJ Delft, Netherlands
[3] Delft Univ Technol, Fac Elect Engn Math & Comp Sci, Terahertz Sensing Grp, NL-2628 CD Delft, Netherlands
关键词
QUASI-PARTICLE; BAND;
D O I
10.1038/ncomms4130
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
In a superconductor, in which electrons are paired, the density of unpaired electrons should become zero when approaching zero temperature. Therefore, radiation detectors based on breaking of pairs promise supreme sensitivity, which we demonstrate using an aluminium superconducting microwave resonator. Here we show that the resonator also enables the study of the response of the electron system of the superconductor to pair-breaking photons, microwave photons and varying temperatures. A large range in radiation power (at 1.54 THz) can be chosen by carefully filtering the radiation from a blackbody source. We identify two regimes. At high radiation power, fluctuations in the electron system caused by the random arrival rate of the photons are resolved, giving a straightforward measure of the optical efficiency (48 +/- 8%) and showing an unprecedented detector sensitivity. At low radiation power, fluctuations are dominated by excess quasiparticles, the number of which is measured through their recombination lifetime.
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页数:8
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