Superconducting thermo-electric bolometer for cosmology instruments

Paper in proceeding, 2010

A novel type of the zero-biased thermo-electric bolometer (TEB) is proposed. The bolometer is based on a Charge-to-Voltage Converter (CVC) with a Superconductor- Insulator-Normal (SIN) Tunnel Junction and a superconducting absorber. The absorption of photons in the absorber leads to excitation of quasiparticles with some fraction of charge imbalance, tunneling through the SIN junction and generation of voltage. The thermoelectric voltage is determined by accumulation of tunneling charge in an external capacitance. Conversion efficiency is very high and voltage values comparable with a superconducting gap are easily achieved. The zero-biased CVC-TEB can be effectively used for creation of an array of bolometers.