Optimization of the cold-electron bolometer and a cascade quasiparticle amplifier in the voltage-biased mode

Journal article, 2022

An optimized concept of the Cold-Electron Bolometer (CEB) with Superconductor-Insulator-Normal (SIN) Tunnel Junction and Andreev SN contact for voltage-bias mode has been developed. The responsivity of this design is much better than the widespread concept of the CEB with two SIN tunnel junctions for the current-biased mode (SINIS structure) due to degradation of responsivity by a factor of two in voltage-bias (VB) mode. Besides that, for the realization of the CEB with the same capacitance, we need twice larger junctions that lead to four times larger area and volume of the absorber. As a result, the NEP of one SIN junction CEB is half that of two SIN junction CEB. A novel concept of the quasiparticle cascade amplifier (QCA) based on harvesting the waste energy of relaxed quasiparticles without any additional voltage bias has been developed. The distinguish feature of the cascade principle is utilizing the same dc voltage as used for CEB. The cascade principle of signal amplification proved to be possible due to the conversion of electrons to holes in the second absorber. The amplifier is based on the optimized CEB with one SIN junction and one SN contact. The coefficient of power amplification of the incoming signal to the potential energy of hot quasiparticles is huge and can achieve a level of 140 at the optimal bias point. The coefficient of power amplification of the QCA can reach a value of 30 and more to overcome the noise of the SQUID amplifier. For a power load of 6 pW, the total NEP of the CEB is decreased to the level of pho-ton noise NEP, down to 0.7*NEPphot.