Kozorezov, A. G. and Lambert, Colin and Marsili, F. and Stevens, M. J. and Verma, V. B. and Stern, J. A. and Horansky, R. and Dyer, S. and Duff, S. and Pappas, D. P. and Lita, A. and Shaw, M. D. and Mirin, R. P. and Nam, Sae Woo (2015) Quasiparticle recombination in hotspots in superconducting current-carrying nanowires. Physical review B, 92 (6): 064504. ISSN 1098-0121
Abstract
We describe a kinetic model of recombination of nonequilibrium quasiparticles generated by single photon absorption in superconducting current-carrying nanowires. The model is developed to interpret two-photon detection experiments in which a single photon does not possess sufficient energy for breaking superconductivity at a fixed low bias current. We show that quasiparticle self-recombination in relaxing hotspots dominates diffusion expansion effects and explains the observed strong bias current, wavelength, and temperature dependencies of hotspot relaxation in tungsten silicide superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors.