TOPICAL REVIEW

Hot-electron effect in superconductors and its applications for radiation sensors

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Published 11 March 2002 • Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd
, , Citation Alexei D Semenov et al 2002 Supercond. Sci. Technol. 15 R1 DOI 10.1088/0953-2048/15/4/201

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Author affiliations

1 DLR Institute of Space Sensor Technology and Planetary Exploration, 12489 Berlin, Germany

2 Physics Department, State Pedagogical University of Moscow, 119891 Moscow, Russia

3 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627-0231, USA

4 Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, PL-02904 Warszawa, Poland

Dates

  1. Received 20 June 2001
  2. Published

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0953-2048/15/4/R1

Abstract

The paper reviews the main aspects of nonequilibrium hot-electron phenomena in superconductors and various theoretical models developed to describe the hot-electron effect. We discuss implementation of the hot-electron avalanche mechanism in superconducting radiation sensors and present the most successful practical devices, such as terahertz mixers and direct intensity detectors, for far-infrared radiation. Our presentation also includes the novel approach to hot-electron quantum detection implemented in superconducting x-ray to optical photon counters.

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10.1088/0953-2048/15/4/201