Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Qingyuan Zhao

Karl Kimon Berggren

Adam N McCaughan

An active three-terminal superconducting device having an intersection region at which a hot spot may be controllably formed is described. The intersection region may exhibit current crowding in response to imbalances in current densities applied to channels connected to intersection region. The current crowding may form a hot spot, in which the superconducting device may exhibit a measurable resistance. In some cases, a three-terminal superconducting device may be configured to sense an amount of superconducting current flowing in a channel or loop without having to perturb the superconducting state or amount of current flowing in the channel. A three-terminal superconducting device may be used to read out a number of fluxons stored in a superconducting memory element.

Current crowding in three-terminal superconducting devices and related methods

An integrated, superconducting imaging sensor may be formed from a single, meandering nanowire. The sensor is capable of single-photon (or single-event) detection and imaging with &#x2dc;10 micron spatial resolution and sub-100-picosecond temporal resolution. The sensor may be readily scaled to large areas.

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Malden, MA, United States of America

Qingyuan Zhao