2024/11/14 by Baalbergen, F. B., Zadeh, I. E., de Dood, M. J. A.
#FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det) #Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2411.09494
We demonstrate novel laser-induced relaxation oscillations in superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs). These oscillations appear when a voltage biased NbTiN nanobridge detector is illuminated with intense pulsed laser light at a repetition rate of ∼19MHz. They differ from the well-known relaxation oscillations by a step-wise increase in frequency and phase locking of the oscillations to the laser pulses. We create a model that incorporates electrical feedback and excludes thermal effects to simulate and explain the origin of the observed laser-induced relaxation oscillations. Qualitative agreement to the experiment is achieved using realistic values for the parameters in the model.