Noise Measurements in Hot-Electron Titanium Nanobolometers

Boris S. Karasik, Sergey V. Pereverzev, David Olaya,
Jian Wei, Michael E. Gershenson, and Andrei V. Sergeev

Abstract—We are presenting experimental results on the electrical noise in small titanium hot-electron nanobolometers with the critical temperature above 300 mK. The noise data demonstrate good agreement with the conventional bolometer theory prediction. The noise is dominated by the thermal energy fluctuations (phonon noise) when the operating temperature is set just a few mK below the superconducting transition. The corresponding noise equivalent power (NEP) is about 3×10-18 W/Hz^1/2 for the smallest measured device. An additional factor of 2-3 reduction of NEP is feasible if the device length and thickness are further reduced. Such a combination of the low NEP and the relatively high operating temperature is attractive for submillimeter low-background applications and has not been achieved with other types of bolometers.

Index Terms—bolometers, superconducting device noise, submillimeter wave detectors, superconducting radiation detectors.

Manuscript received 26 August 2008.
The research described in this paper was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
B. S. Karasik and S. V. Pereverzev are with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109 (BSK’s phone: 818-393-4438; fax: 818-393-4683; e-mail: boris.s.karasik@jpl.nasa.gov).
D. Olaya was with Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA. He is now with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, CO 80305 (email: david.olaya@nist.gov).
J. Wei was with Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA. He is now with Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208 (email: jian-wei@northwestern.edu).
M. E. Gershenson is with Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA (gersh@physics.rutgers.edu)
A. V. Sergeev is with State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260 (email: asergeev@eng.buffalo.edu).

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