2020/11/05 by Evan D. Walsh, Woochan Jung, Gil-Ho Lee +10
Computer Science · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Electrical Measurement Techniques #Cooper pair #Detector #Josephson effect #Photon #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Pi Josephson junction #Plasmon #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quasiparticle #Superconducting tunnel junction #Superconductivity #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.supr-con #physics.app-ph #physics.optics #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/science.abf5539
published as Science 372, 409 (2021) · 12 pages, 9 figures, and 4 tables
arxiv created 2020/11/05 · openalex created_date 2020/11/09 · openalex publication_date 2021/04/22 · arxiv updated 2021/06/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Josephson junctions are superconducting devices used as high-sensitivity magnetometers and voltage amplifiers as well as the basis of high-performance cryogenic computers and superconducting quantum computers. Although device performance can be degraded by the generation of quasiparticles formed from broken Cooper pairs, this phenomenon also opens opportunities to sensitively detect electromagnetic radiation. We demonstrate single near-infrared photon detection by coupling photons to the localized surface plasmons of a graphene-based Josephson junction. Using the photon-induced switching statistics of the current-biased device, we reveal the critical role of quasiparticles generated by the absorbed photon in the detection mechanism. The photon sensitivity will enable a high-speed, low-power optical interconnect for future superconducting computing architectures.