Kinetic inductance current sensor for visible to near-infrared wavelength transition-edge sensor readout

Abstract Single-photon detectors based on the superconducting transition-edge sensor are used in a number of visible to near-infrared applications, particularly for photon-number-resolving measurements in quantum information science. To be practical for large-scale spectroscopic imaging or photonic quantum computing applications, the size of visible to near-infrared transition-edge sensor arrays and their associated readouts must be increased from a few pixels to many thousands. In this manuscript, we introduce the kinetic inductance current sensor, a scalable readout technology that exploits the nonlinear kinetic inductance in a superconducting resonator to make sensitive current measurements. Kinetic inductance current sensors can replace superconducting quantum interference devices for many applications because of their ability to measure fast, high slew-rate signals, their compatibility with standard microwave frequency-division multiplexing techniques, and their relatively simple fabrication. Here, we demonstrate the readout of a visible to near-infrared transition-edge sensor using a kinetic inductance current sensor with 3.7 MHz of bandwidth. We measure a readout noise of $$1.4\,{{{\rm{pA}}}}/\sqrt{{{{\rm{Hz}}}}}$$ 1.4 pA / Hz , considerably below the detector noise at frequencies of interest, and an energy resolution of (0.137 ± 0.001) eV at 0.8 eV, comparable to resolutions observed with non-multiplexed superconducting quantum interference device readouts.