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Journal of Applied Physics

On-chip characterization of low-noise microstrip-coupled transition edge sensors

Karwan Rostem, D. J. Goldie, S. Withington, D. Glowacka, Vassilka N. Tsaneva, Michael D. Audley

Published Apr 15, 2009• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Transition edge sensors (TESs) are used extensively in millimeter-wave and submillimeter-wave astronomy. The next technological push is to reduce the noise equivalent powers from 10−17 to 10−20 W Hz−1/2 in order to take full advantage of the exceptionally low backgrounds associated with cooled-aperture space telescopes. We describe a lab-on-a-chip (LoC) for measuring the small-signal and noise properties of ultralow-noise microstrip-coupled TESs. The LoC comprises two suspended SiNx membranes, one of which supports a single-mode, variable-temperature blackbody source, and the other a microstrip-coupled TES. The two devices are connected by a superconducting microstrip transmission line. The temperature of the source is determined by Johnson noise thermometry using superconducting quantum interference device readout. In this paper, we describe the theory, layout, operation, and calibration of the experimental system and report on two prototype devices. The LoC concept has many advantages, and already we have been able to assess the optical efficiencies of our TESs. We have started to gain an appreciation of the losses associated with 100–300 GHz microminiature superconducting microstrip transmission lines at low temperatures. The next phase of our work is to apply the technique to ultralow-noise detectors, to study fluctuation phenomena in multimode devices, and to investigate the behavior of more complicated integrated circuits.

DOI
10.1063/1.3097779

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High resolution on-chip thermometry using a microstrip-coupled transition edge sensor

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Our recent work demonstrated highly efficient coupling of broadband thermal photon radiation between the termination resistors of a superconducting microstrip transmission line measured using a transition edge sensor (TES). A simple modification of this scheme is presented that permits rapid thermometry of micron-scale objects at temperatures below 3 K. Broadband photon noise gives a limiting temperature sensitivity of 3.8 μK for a 1 s integration time for measurements at 0.5 K. In practice, phonon noise in the thermal link between the TES and the heat bath limits the achievable temperature resolution to about 30 μK for a typical TES with noise equivalent power of 2×10−17 W/Hz with the same integration time.

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To improve both scalability and noise-filtering capability of a transition-edge sensor (TES), a new concept of a thin-film detector is suggested, which is based on embedding a microbridge TES into a high-Q planar GHz-range resonator weakly coupled to a 50-Ω-readout transmission line. Such a TES element is designed as a hot-electron microbolometer coupled to a THz-range antenna and as a load of the resonator at the same time. A weak THz signal coupled to the antenna heats the microbridge TES, thus reducing the quality factor of the resonator and leading to a power increment in the readout line. The power-to-power conversion gain, an essential figure of merit, is estimated to be above 10. To demonstrate the basic concept, we fabricated and tested a few submicrometer-sized devices from Nb thin films for operation temperature about 5 K. The dc and RF characterization of the new device is made at a resonator frequency about 5.8 GHz. A low-noise high-electron mobility transistor amplifier is used in our TES experiments without the need for a SQUID readout. The optical sensitivity to blackbody radiation within the frequency band 600-700 GHz ismeasured as (2.7 ± 0.9) × 10-14W/√Hz at Tc≈ 5 K at bath temperature ≈1.5 K.

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White noise of dissipationless microwave radio frequency superconducting quantum interference device (RF-SQUID) multiplexers has been experimentally studied to evaluate their readout performance for transition edge sensor (TES) photon counters ranging from near infrared to gamma ray. The characterization has been carried out at 4 K, first to avoid the low-frequency fluctuations present at around 0.1 K, and second, for a feasibility study of readout operation at 4 K for extended applications. To increase the resonant Q at 4 K and maintain low noise SQUID operation, multiplexer chips consisting of niobium nitride (NbN)-based coplanar-waveguide resonators and niobium (Nb)-based RF-SQUIDs have been developed. This hybrid multiplexer exhibited 1 × 104 ≤ Q ≤ 2 × 104 and the square root of spectral density of current noise referred to the SQUID input √SI = 31 pA/√Hz. The former and the latter are factor-of-five and seven improvements from our previous results on Nb-based resonators, respectively. Two-directional readout on the complex plane of the transmission component of scattering matrix S21 enables us to distinguish the flux noise from noise originating from other sources, such as the cryogenic high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) amplifier. Systematic noise measurements with various microwave readout powers PMR make it possible to distinguish the contribution of noise sources within the system as follows: (1) The achieved √SI is dominated by the Nyquist noise from a resistor at 4 K in parallel to the SQUID input coil which is present to prevent microwave leakage to the TES. (2) The next dominant source is either the HEMT-amplifier noise (for small values of PMR) or the quantization noise due to the resolution of 300-K electronics (for large values of PMR). By a decrease of these noise levels to a degree that is achievable by current technology, we predict that the microwave RF-SQUID multiplexer can exhibit √SI ≤ 5 pA/√Hz, i.e., close to √SI of state-of-the-art DC-SQUID-based multiplexers.

Journal of Applied Physics•Jun 10, 2014•16 citations
Transition edge sensors (TESs) are used extensively in millimeter-wave and submillimeter-wave astronomy. The next technological push is to reduce the noise equivalent powers from 10−17 to 10−20 W Hz−1/2 in order to take full advantage of the exceptionally low backgrounds associated with cooled-aperture space telescopes. We describe a lab-on-a-chip (LoC) for measuring the small-signal and noise properties of ultralow-noise microstrip-coupled TESs. The LoC comprises two suspended SiNx membranes, one of which supports a single-mode, variable-temperature blackbody source, and the other a microstrip-coupled TES. The two devices are connected by a superconducting microstrip transmission line. The temperature of the source is determined by Johnson noise thermometry using superconducting quantum interference device readout. In this paper, we describe the theory, layout, operation, and calibration of the experimental system and report on two prototype devices. The LoC concept has many advantages, and already we have been able to assess the optical efficiencies of our TESs. We have started to gain an appreciation of the losses associated with 100–300 GHz microminiature superconducting microstrip transmission lines at low temperatures. The next phase of our work is to apply the technique to ultralow-noise detectors, to study fluctuation phenomena in multimode devices, and to investigate the behavior of more complicated integrated circuits.
Our recent work demonstrated highly efficient coupling of broadband thermal photon radiation between the termination resistors of a superconducting microstrip transmission line measured using a transition edge sensor (TES). A simple modification of this scheme is presented that permits rapid thermometry of micron-scale objects at temperatures below 3 K. Broadband photon noise gives a limiting temperature sensitivity of 3.8 μK for a 1 s integration time for measurements at 0.5 K. In practice, phonon noise in the thermal link between the TES and the heat bath limits the achievable temperature resolution to about 30 μK for a typical TES with noise equivalent power of 2×10−17 W/Hz with the same integration time.
To improve both scalability and noise-filtering capability of a transition-edge sensor (TES), a new concept of a thin-film detector is suggested, which is based on embedding a microbridge TES into a high-Q planar GHz-range resonator weakly coupled to a 50-Ω-readout transmission line. Such a TES element is designed as a hot-electron microbolometer coupled to a THz-range antenna and as a load of the resonator at the same time. A weak THz signal coupled to the antenna heats the microbridge TES, thus reducing the quality factor of the resonator and leading to a power increment in the readout line. The power-to-power conversion gain, an essential figure of merit, is estimated to be above 10. To demonstrate the basic concept, we fabricated and tested a few submicrometer-sized devices from Nb thin films for operation temperature about 5 K. The dc and RF characterization of the new device is made at a resonator frequency about 5.8 GHz. A low-noise high-electron mobility transistor amplifier is used in our TES experiments without the need for a SQUID readout. The optical sensitivity to blackbody radiation within the frequency band 600-700 GHz ismeasured as (2.7 ± 0.9) × 10-14W/√Hz at Tc≈ 5 K at bath temperature ≈1.5 K.
Abstract In this paper, we report on the design, fabrication, and characterization of a 220 GHz superconducting transition edge sensor (TES) array developed for ground-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. Unlike conventional TES arrays adopting thermometers made of bilayer superconducting films, the TES array has thermometers made of simpler single-layer titanium (Ti) film deposited on a suspended silicon nitride (SiN x ) membrane. The thermal weak link is realized by releasing the TES’s thermal island including the Ti thermometer by dry etching with xenon difluoride (XeF2), giving a typical thermal conductance of 25 pW K−1. Its thermal-conductance mechanism is further studied by fitting the measured TES’s complex impedance with a three-block thermal model. The dark and optical noise equivalent power (NEP) of a superconducting TES are both measured. Despite existing lens reflection and dielectric loss in the superconducting microstrip line, its typical optical NEP reaches 100 aW Hz−0.5, which meets the sensitivity requirement for ground-based CMB experiments.
Transition Edge Sensors (TESs) are highly sensitive cryogenic detectors widely used in astronomy, high-energy physics and nuclear radiation detection. As TES is increasingly deployed in large-scale arrays to improve sensitivity and effective collecting area, multiplexed readout becomes essential for reducing system complexity. Microwave SQUID multiplexing (μMUX) technology combining superconducting resonators with radio-frequency superconducting quantum interference devices (RF-SQUIDs), represents a state-of-the-art solution. In this work, a room-temperature readout prototype for TES μMUX readout was designed. The system features a scalable two-stage architecture, including a highly integrated, chassis-independent front-end signal processing module and back-end event-reconstruction module. A high-frequency-resolution frequency-comb signal generation method with real-time, per-tone frequency and phase tunability was developed. In addition, optimization of the firmware implementation effectively overcomes the computational-resource bottleneck of the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The prototype supports autonomous frequency sweeping, parameter diagnostics, and online event reconstruction. Self-test shows S 21 phase noise better than −110 dBc/Hz at −30 dBm, remaining stable with increasing channel count. Joint tests with a μMUX cryogenic system successfully captured the RF-SQUID response and achieved an equivalent noise current of 44 pA/√Hz referred to the TES, validating the prototype as a practical solution of the room-temperature system for TES μMUX readout.
Transition-Edge Sensors (TESs) are the most promising devices as single photon detectors in the visible and infrared range. In particular ultra-fast TESs with few hundred ns response time and high quantum efficiency find application in different fields like quantum optics, quantum metrology and quantum information. In this work, the main objective is to measure the noise effect on the performance of the TESs when operated at visible and infrared wavelengths as the TESs performance depends on the sensor parameters and also on the noise level. The noise analysis is done by experimentally calculating the noise generated by the different block of the Single quantum interface device and to the TES. We have also seen from our numerical analysis that the overall noise of the system is 1 × 10 12 − nV / Hz . The above estimate is valid for the low-temperature steady –state biasing conditions of our TES device. Keywords: Gain of Op-Amp, Photo Detectors, Single Quantum Interference Device, Tank Circuit
White noise of dissipationless microwave radio frequency superconducting quantum interference device (RF-SQUID) multiplexers has been experimentally studied to evaluate their readout performance for transition edge sensor (TES) photon counters ranging from near infrared to gamma ray. The characterization has been carried out at 4 K, first to avoid the low-frequency fluctuations present at around 0.1 K, and second, for a feasibility study of readout operation at 4 K for extended applications. To increase the resonant Q at 4 K and maintain low noise SQUID operation, multiplexer chips consisting of niobium nitride (NbN)-based coplanar-waveguide resonators and niobium (Nb)-based RF-SQUIDs have been developed. This hybrid multiplexer exhibited 1 × 104 ≤ Q ≤ 2 × 104 and the square root of spectral density of current noise referred to the SQUID input √SI = 31 pA/√Hz. The former and the latter are factor-of-five and seven improvements from our previous results on Nb-based resonators, respectively. Two-directional readout on the complex plane of the transmission component of scattering matrix S21 enables us to distinguish the flux noise from noise originating from other sources, such as the cryogenic high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) amplifier. Systematic noise measurements with various microwave readout powers PMR make it possible to distinguish the contribution of noise sources within the system as follows: (1) The achieved √SI is dominated by the Nyquist noise from a resistor at 4 K in parallel to the SQUID input coil which is present to prevent microwave leakage to the TES. (2) The next dominant source is either the HEMT-amplifier noise (for small values of PMR) or the quantization noise due to the resolution of 300-K electronics (for large values of PMR). By a decrease of these noise levels to a degree that is achievable by current technology, we predict that the microwave RF-SQUID multiplexer can exhibit √SI ≤ 5 pA/√Hz, i.e., close to √SI of state-of-the-art DC-SQUID-based multiplexers.