A crossed bowtie antenna can expand a quantum sensor's detection area by 15 times without adding any noise or defects.
April 23, 2026
Original Paper
Enhanced Mid-Infrared Single-Photon Detection with Antenna-Coupled Superconducting Nanowires
arXiv · 2604.18155
The Takeaway
Superconducting nanowires are world-class sensors for detecting single photons of light. Making these detectors larger usually makes them more prone to defects and increases the noise level. A new design uses a bowtie-shaped antenna to concentrate light onto a tiny nanowire, effectively bypassing the size versus noise trade-off. This setup increases the effective sensing area by a factor of 15.7 while keeping the actual wire short. Such an improvement could lead to much faster quantum communication and more sensitive infrared telescopes for peering through space dust.
From the abstract
Scaling the photon-detection area of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) has traditionally been achieved by nanowire meandering. However, material inhomogeneities and fabrication-induced defects, such as line-edge roughness, increase with nanowire length, leading to reduced internal photon-detection efficiency and elevated dark-count rates. This trade-off becomes increasingly pronounced as nanowires are scaled to sub-100 nm widths and sub-5 nm thicknesses required for mid-