Photon noise limited radiation detection with lens-antenna coupled microwave kinetic inductance detectors

Microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs) have shown great potential for sub-mm instrumentation because of the high scalability of the technology. Here, we demonstrate for the first time in the sub-mm band (0.1–2 mm) a photon noise limited performance of a small antenna coupled MKID detector array and we describe the relation between photon...

Readout-power heating and hysteretic switching between thermal quasiparticle states in kinetic inductance detectors

A model is presented for readout-power heating in kinetic inductance detectors. It is shown that the power dissipated by the readout signal can cause the temperature of the quasiparticle system in the superconducting resonator to switch between well-defined states. At low readout powers, only a single solution to the heat balance equation exists...