[en] Antenna-coupled suspended single carbon nanotubes exposed to 108 GHz microwave radiation are shown to be selectively heated with respect to their metal contacts. This leads to an increase in the conductance as well as to the development of a power-dependent DC voltage. The increased conductance stems from the temperature dependence of tunneling into a one-dimensional electron system. The DC voltage is interpreted as a thermovoltage, due to the increased temperature of the electron liquid compared to the equilibrium temperature in the leads.

No abstract available

[en] The NIKA2 instrument, operating at the IRAM 30-m telescope, demonstrates that the aluminum LEKID technology is a state-of-the-art solution for detectors dedicated to millimeter-wave astronomy. Following this path, several instrumental projects envisage today the use of LEKID technology. To cover the full 60–600 GHz band, relevant for CMB-oriented experiments, we are exploring new materials and solutions and we present our latest results. We present a new technology from NIKA2 developments to address the band 450–650 GHz. And we expose our first developments of the trilayer Al/Ti/Al technology following our work for low frequencies (60–80 GHz).

[en] We experimentally investigate the effect of a magnetic field on photon detection in superconducting single-photon detectors (SSPDs). At low fields, the effect of a magnetic field is through the direct modification of the quasiparticle density of states of the superconductor, and magnetic field and bias current are interchangeable, as is expected for homogeneous dirty-limit superconductors. At the field where a first vortex enters the detector, the effect of the magnetic field is reduced, up until the point where the critical current of the detector starts to be determined by flux flow. From this field on, increasing the magnetic field does not alter the detection of photons anymore, whereas it does still change the rate of dark counts. This result points at an intrinsic difference in dark and photon counts, and also shows that no enhancement of the intrinsic detection efficiency of a straight SSPD wire is achievable in a magnetic field

[en] We present an experimental study of kinetic inductance detectors (KIDs) fabricated of atomic layer deposited TiN films and characterized at radiation frequencies of 350 GHz. The responsivity to radiation is measured and found to increase with the increase in radiation powers, opposite to what is expected from theory and observed for hybrid niobium titanium nitride/aluminium (NbTiN/Al) and all-aluminium (all-Al) KIDs. The noise is found to be independent of the level of the radiation power. The noise equivalent power improves with higher radiation powers, also opposite to what is observed and well understood for hybrid NbTiN/Al and all-Al KIDs. We suggest that an inhomogeneous state of these disordered superconductors should be used to explain these observations

[en] The New IRAM KID Arrays 2 (NIKA2) consortium has just finished installing and commissioning a millimetre camera on the IRAM 30-m telescope. It is a dual-band camera operating with three frequency-multiplexed kilo-pixels arrays of lumped element kinetic inductance detectors (LEKID) cooled at 150 mK, designed to observe the intensity and polarisation of the sky at 260 and 150 GHz (1.15 and 2 mm). NIKA2 is today an IRAM resident instrument for millimetre astronomy, such as intracluster medium from intermediate to distant clusters and so for the follow-up of Planck satellite detected clusters, high redshift sources and quasars, early stages of star formation and nearby galaxies emission. We present an overview of the instrument performance as it has been evaluated at the end of the commissioning phase.