cfaed Seminar Series

Abstract

Detection of photons and energetic particles is an essential part of many scientific experiments, environment and industrial monitoring, space exploration, etc. With a huge variation of photon energies (wavelengths), fluxes, and environments in what sensing to be performed, there is a large variation for detector requirements. Superconducting nano detectors fill an important niche as extremely sensitive and fast detectors from alpha-particles, through visible and IR photons, and till terahertz and microwave photons. Many of those detectors utilize ultra-thin superconducting films, often with nanometer scale dimensions. In this lecture, we will discuss important aspects of designing such detectors, their fabrication, and characterization. We will go through some of great projects, whose success is based on photon detector performance.

Bio

Sergey Cherednichenko, received his Diploma (with Honours) in Physics in 1993 from Taganrog State Pedagogical Institute (Russian Federation), and Ph.D. in physics in 1999 from Moscow State Pedagogical University. From 2000, he works at the Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience at Chalmers University of Technology (Gothenburg, Sweden). From 2000-2006 he was involved in development and delivery of terahertz band superconducting mixers for the Herschel Space Observatory (flown in 2009-2013); and from 2008 till 2009 in the water vapour radiometer for ALMA. As from 2007 he is Associate Professor at the same department. He is recipient of two European Research Council (ERC) grants (2012 and 2017), and of multiple research grants from Swedish funding agencies. His research interests include: terahertz heterodyne receivers and mixers, photon detectors; THz antennas and optics; thin superconducting films and their application for THz and photonics; material properties at THz frequencies, and terahertz spectroscopy.