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We report photon-noise limited performance of horn-coupled, aluminum lumped-element kinetic inductance detectors at millimeter wavelengths. The detectors are illuminated by a millimeter-wave source that uses an active multiplier chain to produce radiation between 140 and 160 GHz. We feed the multiplier

We report photon-noise limited performance of horn-coupled, aluminum lumped-element kinetic inductance detectors at millimeter wavelengths. The detectors are illuminated by a millimeter-wave source that uses an active multiplier chain to produce radiation between 140 and 160 GHz. We feed the multiplier with either amplified broadband noise or a continuous-wave tone from a microwave signal generator. We demonstrate that the detector response over a 40 dB range of source power is well-described by a simple model that considers the number of quasiparticles. The detector noise-equivalent power (NEP) is dominated by photon noise when the absorbed power is greater than approximately 1 pW, which corresponds to NEP ≈ 2 × 10-17 W Hz-1/2, referenced to absorbed power. At higher source power levels, we observe the relationships between noise and power expected from the photon statistics of the source signal: NEP ∝ P for broadband (chaotic) illumination and NEP ∝ P1/2 for continuous-wave (coherent) illumination.

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    Title
    • Photon Noise From Chaotic and Coherent Millimeter-Wave Sources Measured With Horn-Coupled, Aluminum Lumped-Element Kinetic Inductance Detectors
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    Date Created
    2016-02-25
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    Identifier
    • Digital object identifier: 10.1063/1.4942804
    • Identifier Type
      International standard serial number
      Identifier Value
      0003-6951
    • Identifier Type
      International standard serial number
      Identifier Value
      1077-3118
    Note
    • The final version of this article, as published in Applied Physics Letters, can be viewed online at: http://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4942804

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    Flanigan, D., Mccarrick, H., Jones, G., Johnson, B. R., Abitbol, M. H., Ade, P., . . . Zmuidzinas, J. (2016). Photon noise from chaotic and coherent millimeter-wave sources measured with horn-coupled, aluminum lumped-element kinetic inductance detectors. Applied Physics Letters, 108(8), 083504. doi:10.1063/1.4942804

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