Print Email Facebook Twitter The non-equilibrium response of a superconductor to pair-breaking radiation measured over a broad frequency band Title The non-equilibrium response of a superconductor to pair-breaking radiation measured over a broad frequency band Author De Visser, P.J. Yates, S.J.C. Guruswamy, T. Goldie, D.J. Withington, S. Neto, A. Llombart, N. Baryshev, A.M. Klapwijk, T.M. Baselmans, J.J.A. Faculty Applied Sciences Department QN/Quantum Nanoscience Date 2015-06-25 Abstract We have measured the absorption of terahertz radiation in a BCS superconductor over a broad range of frequencies from 200 GHz to 1.1 THz, using a broadband antenna-lens system and a tantalum microwave resonator. From low frequencies, the response of the resonator rises rapidly to a maximum at the gap edge of the superconductor. From there on, the response drops to half the maximum response at twice the pair-breaking energy. At higher frequencies, the response rises again due to trapping of pair-breaking phonons in the superconductor. In practice, this is a measurement of the frequency dependence of the quasiparticle creation efficiency due to pair-breaking in a superconductor. The efficiency, calculated from the different non-equilibrium quasiparticle distribution functions at each frequency, is in agreement with the measurements. To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:d8ee356d-fb05-4582-976f-77d743d086bd Publisher American Institute of Physics ISSN 0003-6951 Source https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4923097 Source Applied Physics Letters, 106 (25), 2015 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights © 2015 AIP Publishing Files PDF deVisser_2015.pdf 439.09 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:d8ee356d-fb05-4582-976f-77d743d086bd/datastream/OBJ/view