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IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

Utilizing Nonlinearity in a Superconducting NbN Stripline Resonator for Radiation Detection

Eran Segev, Baleegh Abdo, Oleg Shtempluck, Eyal Buks

Published Jun 1, 2007• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We study a microwave superconducting stripline resonator made of NbN on a sapphire substrate. A radiation detector (RD) having a thin meander shape is integrated into the resonator. We harness an extremely strong nonlinear instability occurring in the device in order to enhance its sensitivity to infrared radiation impinging on the RD. Characterization measurements yield a noise equivalent power of 34 fW/radicHz at a modulation frequency of 7.74 GHz. Such a device may be exploited for fast and sensitive radiation detection.

DOI
10.1109/tasc.2007.897723

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Journal of Physics Conference Series•Jun 1, 2006•0 citations
We study a microwave superconducting stripline resonator made of NbN on a sapphire substrate. A radiation detector (RD) having a thin meander shape is integrated into the resonator. We harness an extremely strong nonlinear instability occurring in the device in order to enhance its sensitivity to infrared radiation impinging on the RD. Characterization measurements yield a noise equivalent power of 34 fW/radicHz at a modulation frequency of 7.74 GHz. Such a device may be exploited for fast and sensitive radiation detection.
We study a microwave superconducting stripline resonator made of NbN on a Sapphire wafer. Novel, self-sustained modulation of the reflected power off the resonator, at frequencies of up to 60MHz, has been recently reported. Here we show experimentally that near the self modulation threshold, the device exhibits a giant nonlinearity, which manifests itself in an extremely high intermodulation gain, accompanied by a very strong noise squeezing and period doubling of various orders. Such a device is highly suitable for serving as a readout device in quantum data processing systems.
We study theoretically and experimentally the response of a microwave superconducting stripline resonator, integrated with a microbridge, to a monochromatic injected signal. We find that there is a certain range of driving parameters in which a novel nonlinear phenomenon emerges, and self-sustained modulation of the reflected power off the resonator is generated by the resonator. A theoretical model which attributes the self-modulation to a thermal instability yields a good agreement with the experimental results.
We study theoretically and experimentally the response of a microwave superconducting stripline resonator, integrated with a microbridge, to a monochromatic injected signal. We find that there is a certain range of driving parameters, in which a novel nonlinear phenomenon immerges, and self-sustained modulation of the reflected power off the resonator is generated by the resonator. A theoretical model which attributes the self modulation to a thermal instability yields a good agreement with the experimental results.
We have developed a novel geometrical configuration for NbN-based superconducting single photon optical detector (SSPD) that achieves two goals: a much lower intrinsic impedance, and a consequently greater bandwidth, and a much larger signal amplitude compared to the standard meandered configuration. This has been obtained by implementing a properly designed parallel stripline structure where a cascade switching mechanism occurs when one of the striplines is hit by an optical photon. The overall switching occurs synchronously and in a very short time, giving rise to a strong and fast voltage pulse. The SSPD have been realized using state of the art NbN deposition technology and e-beam lithography. The strips are 100 nm wide and 5 μm long and have been realized with 4 nm NbN film on sapphire and Si substrate. We report on experimental characterization of such novel devices. The performances of the proposed novel type of SSPD are compared with standard SSPD design and results in terms of signal amplitude, risetime and effective detection area.
If driven sufficiently strongly, superconducting microresonators exhibit nonlinear behavior including response bifurcation. This behavior can arise from a variety of physical mechanisms including heating effects, grain boundaries or weak links, vortex penetration, or through the intrinsic nonlinearity of the kinetic inductance. Although microresonators used for photon detection are usually driven fairly hard in order to optimize their sensitivity, most experiments to date have not explored detector performance beyond the onset of bifurcation. Here, we present measurements of a lumped-element superconducting microresonator designed for use as a far-infrared detector and operated deep into the nonlinear regime. The 1 GHz resonator was fabricated from a 22 nm thick titanium nitride film with a critical temperature of 2 K and a normal-state resistivity of 100 μΩ cm. We measured the response of the device when illuminated with 6.4 pW optical loading using microwave readout powers that ranged from the low-power, linear regime to 18 dB beyond the onset of bifurcation. Over this entire range, the nonlinear behavior is well described by a nonlinear kinetic inductance. The best noise-equivalent power of 2×10−16 W/Hz1/2 at 10 Hz was measured at the highest readout power, and represents a ∼10 fold improvement compared with operating below the onset of bifurcation.
We have investigated advanced superconducting optical and infrared detectors for their integration with superconductive active circuits. The detectors are based on ultra-thin NbN striplines. NbN is the material of choice for single photon optical and infrared detectors, as already demonstrated in the literature. The detectors so far proposed are based on conceptually simple, although difficult to realize, sub-micrometric meander type structures. Most applications of such detectors require some treatment of the signal generated, either as pulse shaping or signal amplification, to fully exploit the detection capabilities, such as sub-ns response time and proportional response. We have developed a room temperature process that, while preserving reasonable superconducting properties of NbN, allows a simple integration of the detectors in Nb-based circuits. Moreover we have developed a passivation technique, by using a protective AlN layer on top of the NbN one. The developed technology allows complex detector configurations, such as integrated RSFQ circuits or SQUID readout, to be relatively easily realized. The response of our NbN strip to photon irradiation will be presented.