High-absorption optical stack for aluminum kinetic inductance detectors

Abstract

We present a high-absorption optical stack design for aluminum (Al) kinetic inductance detectors (KIDs). Aluminum can be easily processed in micro-fabrication and is the most conventional superconducting material for KIDs. However, it is challenging to achieve high absorption in the Al absorber because of its high reflection at optical wavelengths. By embedding the thin Al film between an anti-reflection (AR) coating layer and a dielectric-based distributed Bragg reflector, we show that close-to-unity absorption can be achieved around a single wavelength (e.g., ≈98.9% at 1518 nm). The reflection and transmission measurements agree well with the calculation based on the transmission matrix model. We also show our preliminary results of absorption ≥70% in a broader wavelength range (≈230nm) with multilayer AR coatings. The absorber design in a lumped-element KID is discussed. Our work paves the way to high-efficiency photon-counting and energy-resolving Al-based KIDs in the optical to NIR range.

Noise analysis and optical response of microwave kinetic inductance detectors with an optical stack

“…no photon detection performance). To our knowledge, only Mai et al [8] have fabricated and characterized a 10 nm-thick Al singlelayer patterned as an MKID absorber embedded in an optical stack. Unfortunately, they have obtained very low internal quality factors likely due to the additional noise originating from the optical stack.…”