To improve both scalability and noise-filtering capability of a Transition-Edge Sensor (TES), a new concept of a thin-film detector is suggested, which is based on embedding a microbridge TES into a high-Q planar GHz range resonator weakly coupled to a 50 Ohm-readout transmission line. Such a TES element is designed as a hot-electron microbolometer coupled to a THz range antenna and as a load of the resonator at the same time. A weak THz signal coupled to the antenna heats the microbridge TES, thus reducing the quality factor of the resonator and leading to a power increment in the readout line. The power-to-power conversion gain, an essential figure of merit, is estimated to be above 10. To demonstrate the basic concept, we fabricated and tested a few submicron sized devices from Nb thin films for operation temperature about 5 K. The dc and rf characterization of the new device is made at a resonator frequency about 5.8 GHz. A low-noise HEMT amplifier is used in our TES experiments without the need for a SQUID readout. The optical sensitivity to blackbody radiation within the frequency band 600-700 GHz is measured as ∼3×10−14W/Hz at Tc {\approx} 5 K at bath temperature ~ 1.5 K.
@article{arxiv.1412.5370,
title = {Wide-Range Bolometer with RF Readout TES},
author = {S. V. Shitov and N. N. Abramov and A. A. Kuzmin and M. Merker and M. Arndt and S. H. Wuensch and K. S. Ilin and E. Erhan and A. Ustinov and M. Siegel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1412.5370},
year = {2018}
}