Adam N. McCaughan

A Superconducting-Nanowire Three-Terminal Electrothermal Device

Superconducting electronics based on Josephson junctions are used to sense and process electronic signals with minimal loss; however, they are ultrasensitive to magnetic fields, limited in their amplification capabilities, and difficult to manufacture. We have developed a 3-terminal, nanowire-based superconducting electrothermal device which has no Josephson junctions. This device, which we call the nanocryotron, can be patterned from a single thin film of superconducting material with conventional electron-beam lithography. The nanocryotron has a demonstrated gain of >20, can drive impedances of 100 kΩ, and operates in typical ambient magnetic fields. We have additionally applied it both as a digital logic element in a half-adder circuit, and as a digital amplifier for superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors pulses. The nanocryotron has immediate applications in classical and quantum communications, photon sensing, and astronomy, and its input characteristics are suitable for integration with existing superconducting technologies.

Fabrication Process Yielding Saturated Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors With 24-ps Jitter

We present an optimized fabrication process for superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors that allowed us to obtain a yield of ~70% for detectors based on 80-nm-wide niobium nitride nanowires. We fabricated detectors that showed 24-ps timing jitter and saturated detection efficiency without the need for cryogenic amplifiers, allowing for operation in a low-bias low-dark-count-rate regime while operating at maximum detection efficiency.

Single-photon imager based on a superconducting nanowire delay line

Detecting spatial and temporal information of individual photons by using singlephoton-detector (SPD) arrays is critical to applications in spectroscopy, communication, biological imaging, astronomical observation, and quantum-information processing. Among the current SPDs, detectors based on superconducting nanowires have outstanding performance, but are limited in their ability to be integrated into large scale arrays due to the engineering difficulty of high-bandwidth cryogenic electronic readout. Here, we address this problem by demonstrating a scalable single-photon imager using a single continuous photon-sensitive superconducting nanowire microwave-plasmon transmission line. By appropriately designing the nanowire’s local electromagnetic environment so that the nanowire guides microwave plasmons, the propagating voltages signals generated by a photon-detection event were slowed down to ~ 2% of the speed of light. As a result, the time difference between arrivals of the signals at the two

All-silicon light-emitting diodes waveguide-integrated with superconducting single-photon detectors

We demonstrate cryogenic, electrically injected, waveguide-coupled Si light-emitting diodes (LEDs) operating at 1.22 μm. The active region of the LED consists of W centers implanted in the intrinsic region of a p-i-n diode. The LEDs are integrated on waveguides with superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs). We demonstrate the scalability of this platform with an LED coupled to eleven SNSPDs in a single integrated photonic device.

Microwave dynamics of high aspect ratio superconducting nanowires studied using self-resonance

We study the microwave impedance of extremely high aspect ratio (length/width ~ 5,000) superconducting niobium nitride nanowires. The nanowires are fabricated in a compact meander geometry that is in series with the center conductor of a 50 ohm coplanar waveguide transmission line. The transmission coefficient of the sample is measured up to 20 GHz. At high frequency, a peak in the transmission coefficient is seen. Numerical simulations show that this is a half-wave resonance along the length of the nanowire, where the nanowire acts as a high impedance, slow wave transmission line. This resonance sets the upper frequency limit for these nanowires as inductive elements. Fitting simulations to the measured resonance enables a precise determination of the nanowires complex sheet impedance at the resonance frequency. The real part is a measure of dissipation, while the imaginary part is dominated by kinetic inductance. We characterize the dependence of the sheet resistance and sheet inductance on both temperature and current and compare the results to recent theoretical predictions for disordered superconductors. These results can aid in the understanding of high frequency devices based on superconducting nanowires. They may also lead to the development of novel superconducting devices such as ultra-compact resonators and slow-wave structures.

Eight-fold signal amplification of a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector using a multiple-avalanche architecture

Superconducting nanowire avalanche single-photon detectors (SNAPs) with n parallel nanowires are advantageous over single-nanowire detectors because their output signal amplitude scales linearly with n. However, the SNAP architecture has not been viably demonstrated for n > 4. To increase n for larger signal amplification, we designed a multi-stage, successive-avalanche architecture which used nanowires, connected via choke inductors in a binary-tree layout. We demonstrated an avalanche detector with n = 8 parallel nanowires and achieved eight-fold signal amplification, with a timing jitter of 54 ps.

Bias sputtered NbN and superconducting nanowire devices

Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) promise to combine near-unity quantum efficiency with >100 megacounts per second rates, picosecond timing jitter, and sensitivity ranging from x-ray to mid-infrared wavelengths. However, this promise is not yet fulfilled, as superior performance in all metrics is yet to be combined into one device. The highest single-pixel detection efficiency and the widest bias windows for saturated quantum efficiency have been achieved in SNSPDs based on amorphous materials, while the lowest timing jitter and highest counting rates were demonstrated in devices made from polycrystalline materials. Broadly speaking, the amorphous superconductors that have been used to make SNSPDs have higher resistivities and lower critical temperature (Tc) values than typical polycrystalline materials. Here, we demonstrate a method of preparing niobium nitride (NbN) that has lower-than-typical superconducting transition temperature and higher-than-typical resistivity. As we will ...

Free-space-coupled superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors for infrared optical communications

This paper describes the construction of a cryostat and an optical system with a free-space coupling efficiency of 56.5% ± 3.4% to a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) for infrared quantum communication and spectrum analysis. A 1K pot decreases the base temperature to T = 1.7 K from the 2.9 K reached by the cold head cooled by a pulse-tube cryocooler. The minimum spot size coupled to the detector chip was 6.6 ± 0.11 µm starting from a fiber source at wavelength, λ = 1.55 µm. We demonstrated photon counting on a detector with an 8 × 7.3 µm2 area. We measured a dark count rate of 95 ± 3.35 kcps and a system detection efficiency of 1.64% ± 0.13%. We explain the key steps that are required to improve further the coupling efficiency.

A compact superconducting nanowire memory element operated by nanowire cryotrons

A superconducting loop stores persistent current without any ohmic loss, making it an ideal platform for energy efficient memories. Conventional superconducting memories use an architecture based on Josephson junctions (JJs) and have demonstrated access times less than 10 ps and power dissipation as low as

nanoSQUID operation using kinetic rather than magnetic induction

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