Oral Presentation

Terahertz KID demonstrating photon-noise-limited performance and intrinsic generation-recombination noise

Author(s): Qing Shi , Jing Li , Qiang Zhi , Zheng Wang , Wei Miao and Sheng-Cai Shi

Presenter: Qing Shi (Purple mountain Observatory, CAS)

The development of large-format detector arrays with background-limited performance is of particular interest at the te-rahertz (THz) band, which is a unique band in search of our cosmic origins. With high sensitivity and being more promising in the pixel number and multiplexing technology, superconducting kinetic inductance detectors (KID) are emerging as a ma-jor choice of detectors of this type. Here we fabricate three-THz-band (0.35/0.85/1.4 THz) KIDs on a single chip from a 120-nm-thick aluminum (Al) superconducting film and measure photon-noise-limited performance and intrinsic genera-tion-recombination noise at high (>1 pW) and low (<1 fW) optical radiation power, respectively. Their responses to black-body (optical) radiation are proved to be resulted purely from photons by comparing with the responses of two dark KIDs in-tentionally arranged on the same detector chip. The lowest optical noise equivalent power (NEP) reaches 6×10-18 W/Hz0.5 and the optical coupling efficiency is in the range of 49~56% for the three KIDs, which are in good agreement with the simulation results.