We report on fractal-featured square and ring-shaped apertures with a Sierpinski carpet pattern(SCP)on metallic and superconducting NbN films.Multiple extraordinary terahertz(THz)transmission peaks are studied in the transmission spectra using both THz time-domain spectroscopy and numerical simulation.The characteristic transmission peaks are found to be associated with the interaction of surface plasmon polaritons(SPPs)and localized surface plasmons(LSPs)for ring-shaped apertures.The effect of LSPs is less remarkable in the square apertures.For the superconducting NbN film,when the temperature is slightly lower than the critical transition temperature T_(c),the peak magnitude of SPP resonances is most prominent due to the non-monotonic temperature dependence of kinetic inductance.These results provide a new way to design compact and efficient THz devices.
We developed a superconducting nanowire single-photon detection(SNSPD) system based on Gifford-McMahon cryocooler for quantum communication applications.Environmental factors which may influence the system performance are intensively studied.Those factors include temperature fluctuations,the ambient magnetic field and the background radiation.By optimizing the bias circuit,the stability of SNSPD system to electrical noise and disturbance was effectively enhanced,thus making it more suitable for field application.A 4-channel SNSPD system with quantum efficiency higher than 4% at the dark count rate of 10 Hz for λ=1550 nm is integrated and applied into a quantum key distribution(QKD) experiment.QKD was successfully carried out over 100 km optical fiber with the final secure key rate of 1.6 kbps and the quantum bit error rate of less than 2%.
At an extremely low temperature of 20 mK, we measured the loop current in a tunable rf superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) with a dc-SQUID. By adjusting the magnetic flux applied to the rf-SQUID loop (Φ f ) and the small dc-SQUID (Φ cjj f ), respectively, the potential shape of the system can be fully controlled in situ. Variation in the transition step and overlap size in the switching current with a barrier flux bias are analyzed, from which we can obtain some relevant device parameters and build a model to explain the experimental phenomenon.
