Photon-noise limited sensitivity in titanium nitride kinetic inductance detectors

Abstract

We demonstrate photon-noise limited performance at sub-millimeter wavelengths in feedhorn-coupled, microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs) made of a TiN/Ti/TiN trilayer superconducting film, tuned to have a transition temperature of 1.4~K. Micro-machining of the silicon-on-insulator wafer backside creates a quarter-wavelength backshort optimized for efficient coupling at 250~\micron. Using frequency read out and when viewing a variable temperature blackbody source, we measure device noise consistent with photon noise when the incident optical power is $>$~0.5~pW, corresponding to noise equivalent powers $>$~3$\times 10^{-17}$ W/$\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$. This sensitivity makes these devices suitable for broadband photometric applications at these wavelengths.

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Cited by in corpus (26)

• CCAT-prime Collaboration: Science Goals and Forecasts with Prime-Cam on the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope
• Frequency-tunable Superconducting Resonators via Nonlinear Kinetic Inductance
• Multiplexed Readout for 1000-pixel Arrays of Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors
• Interplay between kinetic inductance, non-linearity and quasiparticle dynamics in granular aluminum MKIDs
• Counting Near Infrared Photons with Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors
• Millimeter-Wave Polarimeters Using Kinetic Inductance Detectors for TolTEC and Beyond
• Design and performance of dual-polarization lumped-element kinetic inductance detectors for millimeter-wave polarimetry
• Anomalous response of superconducting titanium nitride resonators to terahertz radiation
• Photon noise from chaotic and coherent millimeter-wave sources measured with horn-coupled, aluminum lumped-element kinetic inductance detectors
• Optical Demonstration of THz, Dual-Polarization Sensitive Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors
• The non-equilibrium response of a superconductor to pair-breaking radiation measured over a broad frequency band
• Low Noise Titanium Nitride KIDs for SuperSpec: A Millimeter-Wave On-Chip Spectrometer
• Instrumental performance and results from testing of the BLAST-TNG receiver, submillimeter optics, and MKID arrays
• Prime-Cam: A first-light instrument for the CCAT-prime telescope
• Cryogenic LED pixel-to-frequency mapper for kinetic inductance detector arrays
• Preflight Characterization of the BLAST-TNG Receiver and Detector Arrays
• Uniform non-stoichiometric titanium nitride thin films for improved kinetic inductance detector array
• Development of dual-polarization LEKIDs for CMB observations
• Tile-and-trim micro-resonator array fabrication optimized for high multiplexing factors
• Optical responses of the switching currents in Al and Nb Josephson junctions
• Wafer-Scale MgB2 Superconducting Devices
• BFORE: The B-mode Foreground Experiment
• The BLAST Observatory: A Sensitivity Study for Far-IR Balloon-borne Polarimeters
• Characterization of MKIDs for CMB observation at 220 GHz with the South Pole Telescope
• Study of quasi-particle dynamics using the optical pulse response of asuperconducting resonator
• CCAT-prime: Characterization of the First 280 GHz MKID Array for Prime-Cam