ABSTRACT

Fortunately, however, modem semiconductor fabrication technology provides us with a powerful tool for tackling those small energy quanta, a single electron transistor (SET) [1]. Owing to its extraordinary sensitivity to a charge, an SET can sense a photon if the SET is so designed as to convert incident photons into a charge. Recently, SETs appropriately designed from lateral semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) have indeed been demonstrated to be ideal photon detectors in the THz/GHz spectral region [2-4]. Two classes of detectors have been developed: one utilizes cyclotron resonance absorption in strong magnetic field (Sec.2) and the other uses plasma resonance absorption in the absence of magnetic field (Sec.3). We describe below the physical mechanism, fundamental characteristics of the device and the detector performance for both types of the detector.