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Superconducting nanowire single photon detector (SNSPD) plays a significant role in plenty of fields such as quantum information, deep space laser communication and lidar, while the mechanism of the photon response process still lacks a recognized theory. It is prerequisite and essential for fabricating high-performance SNSPD to understand in depth and clarify the photon response mechanism of the SNSPD. As mature theories on the SNSPD response progress, hot-spot model and vortex-based model both have their disadvantages: in the former there exists the cut-off wavelength and in the later there is the size effect, so they both need further improving. The Cut-off wavelength means that the detection efficiency of the SNSPD drops to zero with the increase of light wavelength, which is indicated by the hot-spot model but not yet observed in experiment. The size effect implies that the vortex does not exist in the weak link with the width less than 4.41ξ, where ξ is the GL coherence length. Phase slip is responsible for the intrinsic dissipation of superconductors, which promises to expound the SNSPD photon response progress and to establish a complete theory. This paper reviews and discusses the fundamental conception, the development history and the research progress of the hot-spot models, i.e. the vortex-based model and the superconductor phase slips, providing a reference for studying the SNSPD photon response mechanism.

Niobium nitride (NbN) nanowires are commonly used as photosensitive materials for superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs). Their optical properties are the key factors influencing the performance of SNSPD. According to the experimental data and simulation results, in this paper we systematically study the optical properties of various niobium nitride nanowire detector device structures, and characterize the reflection spectra and transmission spectra of the following four device structures:1) Backside optical devices with SiO2 as the antireflection layer, 2) backside optical devices with SiN as the antireflection layer, 3) front-facing optical devices with Au+SiN as a mirror, and 4) front-facing optical devices with distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) as a mirror. The NbN films with different thickness are grown on the basis of the four device structures, and the absorption efficiencies of the NbN films with different thickness are observed. The relationships between the optimal NbN thickness and the optical absorption rate for different device structures are found as follows:The maximum absorption rate of NbN on the SiO2 antireflection layer is 91.7% at 1606 nm, while the absorption rates of the remaining structures at the optimal thickness of NbN can reach 99% or more. The absorption rate of the SiN device, the Au+SiN device and the DBR device are 99.3%, 99.8% and 99.9%, respectively. The measured results and simulation structure of DBR device are analyzed. These results are of significance for guiding the design and development of high efficiency SNSPD.

A square hole array is fabricated over a micro-bridge of NbN thin film by electron beam lithography and reactive ion milling. Magneto-resistance is measured across the micro-bridge filled with a hole array near the superconducting transition temperature. It is found that magneto-resistance minima occur when the number of vortices is an integer multiple or a fractional multiple of the number of holes. The temperature and the current dependences of the matching effect are studied.

A quasi-optical superconducting NbN hot-electron bolometer (HEB) mixer is measured in the frequency range of 0.5-2.5 THz for understanding of the frequency dependence of noise temperature of THz coherent detectors. It has been found that noise temperature increasing with frequency is mainly due to the coupling loss between the quasi-optical planar antenna and the superconducting HEB bridge when taking account of non-uniform distribution of high-frequency current. With the coupling loss corrected, the superconducting HEB mixer demonstrates a noise temperature nearly independent of frequency.

We have experimentally studied the surface modifications of Y-Ba-Cu-O (YBCO) thin films using CF4 plasma. The intensity of the plasma fluorination was controlled by changing the biasing voltage and the time of the plasma treatment. Microstructural analyses reveal that the oxygen content of the YBCO thin films was changed. Transport measurements of sufficient fluorinated YBCO films imply that the films changed totally into an oxygen-deficient semi-conducting state. From these experimental results, we believe that plasma fluorination is quite a useful method to form controllable a thin barrier layer in fabricating interface engineered junctions and to form a stable narrow weak-link region in fabricating planar superconductor-normal-superconductor junctions.

We investigate the surface structure and composition of a YBa2Cu3Oy (YBCO) thin film modified by CF4 plasma fluorination. In addition to the absorption of hydrocarbons, chemical reactions of the YBCO surface take place during CF4 plasma treatment. Various x-ray photoelectron spectroscopic data are reported and discussed. The existence of a thin barrier is confirmed, which homogeneously covers the edge of the base YBCO film in our interface engineering Josephson junction. Measurements of Auger electron spectroscopic data and the resistance versus temperature indicate that the barrier is a controllable-insulating layer.

The high-speed deep space communication is one of the key technologies for deep space exploration. Laser communication system equipped with sensitivity of single photon will improve existing deep space communication speed. However, laser communication at single photon level needs to consider not only the effect of transmission environment, but also the performance of used single photon detector and the photon number distribution. As a new single photon detector, superconducting nanowire single photon detector (SNSPD) outperforms the traditional semiconducting SPDs at near infrared wavelengths, and has high detection efficiency, low dark count rate, low timing jitter, high counting rate, etc. The SNSPD can be used for detecting single photons efficiently, rapidly and accurately. In this paper, we introduce the system detection efficiency and dark count rate of SNSPD based on the photoelectric detecting model without considering the effect of atmospheric turbulence, establish the mathematical model of bit error, and put forward the formula of system bit error rate. What should be emphasized is that the bit error rate is an important parameter for measuring the performance of laser communication system. Error is partly from background thermal radiation and circuit electromagnetic interference; in addition, error appears when photons reach the surface of device without being absorbed to successfully produce resistance area or photons are absorbed but there occurs no response. As a result, the calculation of bit error rate includes the whole process of photoelectric conversion. In order to analyze how to affect the size of system bit error rate, first we simulate two factors of the formula, i.e., light intensity and laser pulse repetition frequency. The results show that the light intensity has the greatest influence on error bit rate. With the light intensity increasing from 0.01 to 1000 photon/pulse, the error bit rate significantly decreases from 10-1 to 10-7 level. The influence of laser pulse repetition frequency is restricted by the light intensity, which declines with the increase of pulse repetition frequency. Then we measure the error bit rate experimentally, which validates the simulation model. However, when increasing light intensity or speed, experimental bit error rate is about 10-4 times higher than simulation result. The reason may be that the insufficiency of actual communication modulation extinction ratio of optical signal to the background noise through optical fiber increases the dark count rate. The above model and experimental results could be the foundation of high-speed deep space laser communication such as moon-earth and Mars-earth based on SNSPD.

A Gunn oscillator at 3 mm waveband has been phase-locked to a synthesizer local oscillator using a high Tc YBa2Cu5O7-δ Josephson junction operated at 77 K as the harmonic mixer, with harmonic numbers up to 52. The observed spectrum of the phase-locked output at the intermediate frequency (IF) shows clearly that the quality of the phase-locking is very good. To drive the analogue phase locking loop successfully, it is essential to have IF output and signal-to-noise ratio both as high as possible.

Low-temperature scanning electron microscopy (LTSEM) is a promising measuring technique for probing the spatial distribution of the superconducting properties of the high-temperature superconducting (HTS) thin films. A theoretical analysis of the electron-beam irradiation on the HTS thin films in the LTSEM has been carried out. An inhomogeneously distributed grain array model has been applied in the analysis, and some numerical simulations have been carried out on the electron-beam induced voltage (EIV) signals in the LTSEM experiments. The comparisons of our numerical results with the LTSEM experimental data indicate that it is quite reasonable to use a two-dimensional Josephson junction array for stimulating the inhomogeneous HTS thin film sample. Our numerical results also show that the EIV signals are influenced by the electron-beam power used in the LTSEM, and a reduction of the electron-beam power is suggested in order to eliminate the errors in estimating the local values of critical temperature Tc and critical current Ic by the sample temperature and the bias current at which the first EIV signal occurs.

Superconducting nanowire single photon detector (SNSPD) is a competitive candidate in laser ranging at 1064 nm wavelength compared with other single photon detectors such as InGaAs/InP APD for its high sensitivity, high time precision and low dark counts. In this paper, we apply our SNSPD to a laser ranging system measuring target in Qinghai lake area with atmospheric scatter. The echo photons are received by telescope, and transport through the multimode fiber to the SNSPD photon-sensitive area. The SNSPD, integrated in an optical cavity with a resonant wavelength of 1064 nm, is fabricated on a MgF2 substrate. The optical absorption of NbN film goes up to 98% according to FDTD simulation, and the system efficiency is measured to be about 40%. A pulsed laser at 1064 nm, featuring a peak power of 12 MW and a pulse width of 10 ns, is adopted in the laser ranging system. In this experiment, we first measure the system intrinsic noise and the environment noise introduced into the laser ranging system after turning off the laser. After that, we measure the echo rate for the target at 126 km, which increases up to 96% with an attenuator of 10 dB at the receiver side. The maximum distance of the laser ranging system is analyzed based on the experimental results of dark count and echo rate through a theoretical model of laser radar. The analysis indicates that signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is increased smoothly with the accumulation of time. At the same time, we simulate how the dark counts influence the capability of laser ranging system based on SNSPD, the simulated SNR matches well with the experimental data of target at 126 km. Furthermore, the dark counts, accumulation of time and probability of echo photon affect the SNR according to the simulation results, showing that large dark counts would result in SNR fluctuation and signal annihilation when the probability of echo photon is low. Thus, the maximum distance of laser ranging under the assumption of integration time is estimated through the SNR simulated result, showing that a maximum distance is up to 280 km, 40 km far away from APD detector based system under the same conditions mainly due to the very low dark counts of SNSPD. It should be pointed out that the coupling efficiency between SNSPD and the receiving telescope is low for small view field limited by the 62.5 m fiber of SNSPD. Thus, further work is to fabricate SNSPD with a larger coupling area which is possible to increase the maximum distance with improved coupling settings.

A YBa2Cu3O7-δ thin film is modified by a probe electric field of an atomic force microscope to form a ridge with the width of only a grain cell. The modification varies with the operation parameters of the bias voltage, the moving velocity of the probe and the ambient humidity. Energy dispersive spectroscopy analysis shows only oxygen deficiency in the modified YBCO thin film. As a result, the suppressed superconductivity was found in the junction crossing the ridge.

A tunable superconducting half-wavelength coplanar waveguide resonator (CPWR) with Nb parallel nanowires ∼ 300 nm in width embedded in the center conductor was designed, fabricated, and measured. The frequency shift and the amplitude attenuation of the resonance peak under irradiation of 404-nm pulse laser were observed with different light powers at 4.2 K. The RF power supplied to such a CPWR can serve as current bias, which will affect the light response of the resonator.

Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) with a composite optical structure composed of phase-grating and optical cavity structures are designed to enhance both the system detection efficiency and the response bandwidth. Numerical simulation by the finite-difference time-domain method shows that the photon absorption capacity of SNSPDs with a composite optical structure can be enhanced significantly by adjusting the parameters of the phase-grating and optical cavity structures at multiple frequency bands. The absorption capacity of the superconducting nanowires reaches 70%, 72%, 60.73%, 61.7%, 41.2%, and 46.5% at wavelengths of 684, 850, 732, 924, 1256, and 1426 nm, respectively. The use of a composite optical structure reduces the total filling factor of superconducting nanowires to only 0.25, decreases the kinetic inductance of SNSPDs, and improves the count rates.

In this paper, we study the response properties of multi-photon of NbN superconductor nanowire in superconducting single photon detector (SSPD). We measure the NbN nanowire device's DC characteristics and detection probability for single and multi-photon light pulse signal at a temperature of 3.5 K. The measured results show that the superconducting transition current of superconductor nanowire decreases as light irradiation intensity increases. The photon number detected by SSPD is derived from the slope of detection probability versus light intensity. We find that the detected photon number increases as superconducting nanowire bias current decreases. Moreover, based on quantum optics and hotspot theory, we analyze the mechanism of the multi-photon response of superconducting nanowire semi-quantitatively. This result may be of benefit to understanding SSPD and developing the SSPD with the capability of resolving photon number.

Considering that in a magnetic resonance system, if the detection coil contributes dominantly to the system noise, the performance of the whole system can certainly be improved by switching to a detection coil made of a high-temperature superconductor, and using YBa2Cu3O7 thin films on 25?25?mm2 LaAlO3 substrates, we have prepared two kinds of detection coils: single-coil and two-coil. Encouragingly, their quality factors are measured to be Q>2500 for two-coil (at 22.566?MHz and 77?K) and Q>5500 for single-coil (at 92.3?MHz and 77?K), respectively. Here, we describe the details of the design, fabrication and testing of the coils.

In this paper,the fabrication details and optimization of micro-fabrication process are presented for developing superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPD). Besides,the device failure analysis is also introduced. With those methods,we successfully fabricated high-quality SNSPDs whose maximum system efficiencies were up to 30% for 660 nm wavelength and 4.2% for 1550 nm wavelength according to the single-photon detection experiment. At the dark count rate of 10 c/s,the detection efficiencies were 20% (660 nm) and 3% (1550 nm) with the SNSPD fabricated with above mentioned methods.

The complex refractive indices and the dielectric function of GaN for frequencies ranging from 0.25 to 1.22 THz are obtained using THz time-domain spectroscopy. The real part of the dielectric function first decreases from 0.25 to 0.42 THz and then oscillates from 0.42 to 1.22 THz, whereas the imaginary part of the dielectric function is oscillating within the whole range of frequency. The simple Drude model is extended to take into account the effect of defects on the dielectric function. The extended model is in agreement with the experimental data.

Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy （THz-TDS） has been used to measure the vibrational spectra of polycrystalline D-, L- and DL-ornidazole over the temperature range 6—298 K. The large differences of the spectra are observed in the frequency range 0.3 THz—2.5 THz, which indicates that THz-TDS is an effective tool to distinguish between enantiomers （D-, L-ornidazole） and its racemic compound （DL-ornidazole）. A number of absorption peaks which could not be observed at room temperature are well resolved in the low temperature range. This provides more experimental details for mode assignment. The evolution of these absorption features between 6 K and 298 K was continuously mapped. The absorption frequencies shift to lower values as temperature increases. The measured temperature dependence can be well fitted if we consider the phonon modes follow a Bose-Einstein distribution. Finally, the quantum chemical calculations were carried out to simulate the experimental THz spectra of the three samples in the range of 0.2—2.5 THz. Compared with the calculated results, the observed characteristic absorptions are explained at molecular level.

Using terahertz time domain spectroscopy （THz-TDS）, THz transmission spectrum of the array with sub-wavelength apertures on the Nb thin film has been studied in the temperature range of 5—300 K. The extraordinary transmission is observed and the peak positions are in agreement with the computer simulation technology simulation results. The transmission amplitude increases with the decreasing temperature.

This paper reports the process for fabricating Nb/Al-AlOx/Nb tunnel junction using rf-magnetron sputtering. The S-I-S sandwich structure is prepared without breaking vacuum. A detailed AES and XTEM analysis of the Nb/Al-AlOx/Nb sandwich structure shows the good quality of Al barrier. Typical l-V characteristic curves of tunnel junction are also given.