Superconducting transition-edge sensors are renowned for their extraordinary photon sensitivity and energy resolution, finding applications spanning quantum information, astronomy, and nanophotonics. Here, we report the development of BOlometric Superconducting Optical Nanoscopy (BOSON), a novel platform that integrates bolometric detection at the superconducting transition edges with near-field optical techniques. BOSON enables the mapping of photoinduced changes in superconductivity with unprecedented spatial resolution and photon sensitivity. By incorporating BOSON with low-dimensional materials, we achieved polariton imaging at nanowatt excitation levels--at least four orders of magnitude lower than the power typically required in prior near-field nanoscopy experiments. Our findings highlight the potential for BOSON to advance scanning probe based optical platforms to enable the detection of photons, polaritons, and Cooper pair dynamics at the nanoscale. This paves the way for quantum sensing applications using single-polariton detection and can offer deeper insights into quasiparticle dynamics.
@article{arxiv.2504.14547,
title = {Bolometric Superconducting Optical Nanoscopy (BOSON)},
author = {Ran Jing and Boyi Zhou and Dingchen Kang and Wenjun Zheng and Zijian Zhou and Heng Wang and Xinzhong Chen and Juntao Yao and Bing Cheng and Ji-Hoon Park and Lukas Wehmeier and Zhenbing Dai and Shoujing Chen and Christopher D. Prainito and G. L. Carr and Ilya Charaev and Denis Bandurin and Genda Gu and Qiang Li and Karl. K. Berggren and D. N. Basov and Xu Du and Mengkun Liu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.14547},
year = {2025}
}