Record-Low NEP in Hot-Electron Titanium Nanobolometers

We are developing hot-electron superconducting transition-edge sensors (TES) capable of counting THz photons and operating at . We fabricated superconducting Ti nanosensors with Nb contacts with a volume of on planar Si substrates and have measured the thermal conductance in the material, G=4times10^-3 W/K at 0.3 K, caused predominantly by the weak electron-phonon coupling. The corresponding phonon-noise NEP=3times10^-19 W/Hz^1/2 . Detection of single optical photons (1550 nm and 670 nm wavelength) has been demonstrated for larger devices and yielded the thermal time constants of 30 mus at 145 mK and of 25 mus at 190 mK. This hot-electron direct detector (HEDD) is expected to have a small enough energy fluctuation noise for detecting individual photons with v>THz where NEP~3times10^-20 W/Hz^1/2 is needed for spectroscopy in space.