Superconducting Quantum Devices and Materials Superconducting microcircuits offer unique and extremely sensitive detectors for measurement of magnetic fields, voltages, microwave and millimeter wavelength signals, and individual x-ray photons. Tunnel junction devices developed at Yale have achieved quantum-limited sensitivity at 100 GHz, and form the lowest noise receivers ever studied. Studies of the quantum theory of noise and mixing have been conducted in these systems. Novel tuning mechanisms using quantum circuit elements have been developed. Major applications are in radioastronomy.
Current research is on a novel thermal mixer element, a nanometer-size microbolometer.
Nanometer-scale pinning structures are designed into the microstructure. These are studied in wires and in thin film models. Surface Science Current research by V. Henrich centers on a variety of research programs investigating the properties of solid surfaces and the interaction of surfaces with absorbed atoms and molecules. An underlying theme for much of this research is motivated in part by energy conversion and heterogeneous catalysis, although it spans the full range from basic to applied science. Chemisorption of a wide range of atoms and molecules can be studied by means of appropriate gas-handling facilities.