1,936 research outputs found
Opportunities for mesoscopics in thermometry and refrigeration: Physics and applications
This review presents an overview of the thermal properties of mesoscopic
structures. The discussion is based on the concept of electron energy
distribution, and, in particular, on controlling and probing it. The
temperature of an electron gas is determined by this distribution:
refrigeration is equivalent to narrowing it, and thermometry is probing its
convolution with a function characterizing the measuring device. Temperature
exists, strictly speaking, only in quasiequilibrium in which the distribution
follows the Fermi-Dirac form. Interesting nonequilibrium deviations can occur
due to slow relaxation rates of the electrons, e.g., among themselves or with
lattice phonons. Observation and applications of nonequilibrium phenomena are
also discussed. The focus in this paper is at low temperatures, primarily below
4 K, where physical phenomena on mesoscopic scales and hybrid combinations of
various types of materials, e.g., superconductors, normal metals, insulators,
and doped semiconductors, open up a rich variety of device concepts. This
review starts with an introduction to theoretical concepts and experimental
results on thermal properties of mesoscopic structures. Then thermometry and
refrigeration are examined with an emphasis on experiments. An immediate
application of solid-state refrigeration and thermometry is in ultrasensitive
radiation detection, which is discussed in depth. This review concludes with a
summary of pertinent fabrication methods of presented devices.Comment: Close to the version published in RMP; 59 pages, 35 figure
Micrometre-scale refrigerators
A superconductor with a gap in the density of states or a quantum dot with
discrete energy levels is a central building block in realizing an electronic
on-chip cooler. They can work as energy filters, allowing only hot
quasiparticles to tunnel out from the electrode to be cooled. This principle
has been employed experimentally since the early 1990s in investigations and
demonstrations of micrometre-scale coolers at sub-kelvin temperatures. In this
paper, we review the basic experimental conditions in realizing the coolers and
the main practical issues that are known to limit their performance. We give an
update of experiments performed on cryogenic micrometre-scale coolers in the
past five years
Micrometre-scale refrigerators
A superconductor with a gap in the density of states or a quantum dot with
discrete energy levels is a central building block in realizing an electronic
on-chip cooler. They can work as energy filters, allowing only hot
quasiparticles to tunnel out from the electrode to be cooled. This principle
has been employed experimentally since the early 1990s in investigations and
demonstrations of micrometre-scale coolers at sub-kelvin temperatures. In this
paper, we review the basic experimental conditions in realizing the coolers and
the main practical issues that are known to limit their performance. We give an
update of experiments performed on cryogenic micrometre-scale coolers in the
past five years
Development of a metallic magnetic calorimeter with integrated SQUID readout
This thesis describes the development of a high-resolution soft X-ray detector based on metallic magnetic calorimeters (MMCs). MMCs are cryogenic, energy dispersive particle detectors which consist of a particle absorber that is thermally coupled to a paramagnetic temperature sensor. The latter is placed in a weak magnetic field, hence exhibiting a temperature dependent magnetization M(T). Upon X-ray photon absorption, the rise of detector temperature causes a change of sensor magnetization, which is usually read
out with a current-sensing dc-SQUID via a superconducting flux transformer. Here, an imperfect transformer matching, as well as a transformer intrinsic energy coupling losses,
limit the achievable energy resolution. To challenge this limit, a novel integrated detector was developed, in which the temperature sensor is integrated into a custom-designed dc-SQUID to maximize signal coupling. A major challenge of this configuration is the Joule heating of the SQUID, since heating effects prevent cooling of the detector and thus limit its performance. For this reason, the developed 32 pixel detector makes use of a newly developed thermalization scheme for the SQUID’s shunt resistors, resulting in operation temperatures below 20 mK for the detector. With this kind of detector, a baseline energy resolution of dE = 1.3 eV, and dE = 1.8 eV at 5.9 keV was achieved
Fiske Steps and Abrikosov Vortices in Josephson Tunnel Junctions
We present a theoretical and experimental study of the Fiske resonances in
the current-voltage characteristics of "small" Josephson junctions with
randomly distributed misaligned Abrikosov vortices. We obtained that in the
presence of Abrikosov vortices the resonant interaction of electromagnetic
waves, excited inside a junction, with the ac Josephson current manifests
itself by Fiske steps in a current-voltage characteristics even in the absence
of external magnetic field. We found that the voltage positions of the Fiske
steps are determined by a junction size, but the Fiske step magnitudes depend
both on the density of trapped Abrikosov vortices and on their misalignment
parameter. We measured the magnetic field dependence of both the amplitude of
the first Fiske step and the Josephson critical current of low-dissipative
small based Josephson tunnel junctions with artificially introduced
Abrikosov vortices. A strong decay of the Josephson critical current and a weak
non-monotonic decrease of the first Fiske step amplitude on the Abrikosov
vortex density were observed. The experimentally observed dependencies are well
described by the developed theory.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Physical Review
Quantum shot noise in mesoscopic superconductor-semiconductor heterostructures
Shot noise in a mesoscopic electrical conductor have become one of the most attentiondrawing
subject over the last decade. This is because the shot-noise measurements
provide a powerful tool to study charge transport in mesoscopic systems [1]. While
conventional resistance measurements yield information on the average probability
for the transmission of electrons from source to drain, shot-noise provides additional
information on the electron transfer process, which can not be obtained from resistance
measurements. For example, one can determine the charge ‘q’ of the current
carrying quasi-particles in different systems from the Poisson shot noise SI = 2q�I� [2] where �I� is the mean current of the system. For instance, the quasi-particle
charge is a fraction of the electron charge ‘e’ in the fractional quantum Hall regime
[3, 4, 5]. The multiple charge quanta were observed in an atomic point contact
between two superconducting electrodes [6].
Shot-noise also provides information on the statistics of the electron transfer.
Shot noise in general is suppressed from its classical value SI = 2e�I�, due to the
correlations. In mesoscopic conductors, due to the Pauli principle in fermion statistics,
electrons are highly correlated. As a results, the noise is fully suppressed in the
limit of a perfect open channel T = 1. For the opposite limit of low transmission
T � 1, transmission of electron follows a Poisson process and recovers the Schottky
result SI = 2e�I� [2]. For many channel systems, shot-noise is suppressed to
1/2 × 2e�I� for a symmetric double barrier junction [7, 8], to 1/3 in a disordered
wire [9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14] and to 1/4 in an open chaotic cavity [15, 16, 17].
When a superconductor is involved, the shot-noise can be enhanced by virtue
of the Andreev reflection process taking place at the interface between a normal
metal and a superconductor. In some limiting cases, e.g. in the tunneling and
disordered limit, the shot-noise can be doubled with respect to its normal state
value [18, 19, 20, 21]. One of the main results of this thesis is an extensive comparison
of our experimental data on conductance and shot noise measurements in a S-N
junction with various theoretical models.
In addition to measure shot-noise in a two-terminal geometry, one can also perform
the fluctuation measurements on multi-terminal conductors. Whereas shotnoise corresponds to the autocorrelation of fluctuations from the same leads, crosscorrelation
measurements of fluctuations between different leads provide a wealth of
new experiments. For example, the exchange-correlations can be measured directly
from these geometry [22]. Experimental attempt in mesoscopic electronic device was
the correlation measurements [14, 23] on electron beam-splitter geometry [24] which
is the analogue to the Hanbury-Brown Twiss (HBT) experiment in optics. In their
experiment, Hanbury-Brown and Twiss demonstrated the intensity-intensity correlations
of the light of a star in order to determine its diameter [25]. They measured
a positive correlations between two different output photon beams as predicted to
the particles obeying Bose-Einstein statistics. This behavior is often called ‘bunching’.
On the other hand, a stream of the particles obeying Fermi-Dirac statistics
is expected to show a anti-bunching behavior, resulting in a negative correlation of
the intensity fluctuations. Latter one was confirmed by a Fermionic version of HBT
experiments in single-mode, high-mobility semiconductor 2DEG systems [14, 23].
Whereas in a single electron picture, correlations between Fermions are always
negative1 (anti-bunching), the correlation signal is expected to become positive if
two electrons are injected simultaneously to two arms and leave the device through
different leads for the coincident detection in both outputs2. One simple example is
the splitting of the cooper pair in a Y-junction geometry in front of the superconductor.
Fig.1.1 shows the possible experimental scheme of the correlation measurement
as described here and the sample realized in an high-mobility semiconductor heterostructures.
Since all three experiments were done3, only one left unfolded, ‘The
positive correlations from the Fermionic system’. The main motivation of this thesis
work was to find a positive correlations in the device shown in Fig.1.1. In a
well defined single channel collision experiment on an electron beam splitter, it has
theoretically been shown that the measured correlations are sensitive to the spin
entanglement [29, 30]. This is another even more exciting issue and we would like
to mention that the experimental quest for positive correlations is important for the
new field of quantum computation and communication in the solid state, [31, 32]
in which entangled electrons play a crucial role. A natural source of entanglement
is found in superconductors in which electrons are paired in a spin-singlet
state. A source of entangled electrons may therefore be based on a superconducting
injector.[33, 34, 27, 35, 36, 37, 38, 38, 39, 40, 41] Even more so, an electronic beamsplitter
is capable of distinguishing entangled electrons from single electrons.[29, 42]
However, the positive correlations have not been observed in solid-state mesoscopic
devices until today. This thesis is organized as follows. Chapter 2 is devoted to the theoretical
background of the electrical transport and the current fluctuations. We introduce
the basic concept of electrical transport and the shot noise in normal state and
superconductor-normal metal (S-N) junction. We also briefly review the theoretical
proposals and arguments about the current-current cross-correlations in threeterminal
systems. In Chapter 3, we describe the sample fabrication techniques which
have been done in our laboratory such as e-beam lithography, metallization and etching.
We present also the characterization of our particular system, niobium (Nb) /
InAs-based 2DEG junction. Chapter 4 describes the reliable low-temperature measurement
technique for detecting the noise. We characterize our measurement setup
using a simple RC-circuit model. In Chapter 5, our main results about the shot
noise of S-N junction are presented in detail
Scanning tunneling spectroscopy of high-temperature superconductors
Tunneling spectroscopy played a central role in the experimental verification
of the microscopic theory of superconductivity in the classical
superconductors. Initial attempts to apply the same approach to
high-temperature superconductors were hampered by various problems related to
the complexity of these materials. The use of scanning tunneling
microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS) on these compounds allowed to overcome the
main difficulties. This success motivated a rapidly growing scientific
community to apply this technique to high-temperature superconductors. This
paper reviews the experimental highlights obtained over the last decade. We
first recall the crucial efforts to gain control over the technique and to
obtain reproducible results. We then discuss how the STM/STS technique has
contributed to the study of some of the most unusual and remarkable properties
of high-temperature superconductors: the unusual large gap values and the
absence of scaling with the critical temperature; the pseudogap and its
relation to superconductivity; the unprecedented small size of the vortex cores
and its influence on vortex matter; the unexpected electronic properties of the
vortex cores; the combination of atomic resolution and spectroscopy leading to
the observation of periodic local density of states modulations in the
superconducting and pseudogap states, and in the vortex cores.Comment: To appear in RMP; 65 pages, 62 figure
Proximity Effects and Nonequilibrium Superconductivity in Transition-Edge Sensors
We have recently shown that normal-metal/superconductor (N/S) bilayer TESs
(superconducting Transition-Edge Sensors) exhibit weak-link behavior.1 Here we
extend our understanding to include TESs with added noise-mitigating
normal-metal structures (N structures). We find TESs with added Au structures
also exhibit weak-link behavior as evidenced by exponential temperature
dependence of the critical current and Josephson-like oscillations of the
critical current with applied magnetic field. We explain our results in terms
of an effect converse to the longitudinal proximity effect (LoPE)1, the lateral
inverse proximity effect (LaiPE), for which the order parameter in the N/S
bilayer is reduced due to the neighboring N structures. Resistance and critical
current measurements are presented as a function of temperature and magnetic
field taken on square Mo/Au bilayer TESs with lengths ranging from 8 to 130
{\mu}m with and without added N structures. We observe the inverse proximity
effect on the bilayer over in-plane distances many tens of microns and find the
transition shifts to lower temperatures scale approximately as the inverse
square of the in- plane N-structure separation distance, without appreciable
broadening of the transition width. We also present evidence for nonequilbrium
superconductivity and estimate a quasiparticle lifetime of 1.8 \times 10-10 s
for the bilayer. The LoPE model is also used to explain the increased
conductivity at temperatures above the bilayer's steep resistive transition.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure
Bolometers
Infrared Detectors and technologies are very important for a wide range of applications, not only for Military but also for various civilian applications. Comparatively fast bolometers can provide large quantities of low cost devices opening up a new era in infrared technologies. This book deals with various aspects of bolometer developments. It covers bolometer material aspects, different types of bolometers, performance limitations, applications and future trends. The chapters in this book will be useful for senior researchers as well as beginning graduate students
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