Development of Near Infrared and Visible Kinetic Inductance Detectors KIDs at Paris Observatory

Abstract:
For a few years now, we have been developing optical kinetic inductance detectors (KIDs) at Paris Observatory for astronomical applications. Different KID geometries are being investigated such as the widely used interdigitated capacitor-based KIDs, the parallel plate capacitor-based KIDs to reduce the size of pixels and the vacuum plate capacitor-based KIDs to reduce TLS noise. The KIDs photon absorber is made from titanium nitride with a critical temperature Tc ranging from 1 K to 4.6 K. The lowest Tc is suitable for high performance detection whereas the highest Tc allows for a new phonon-based phenomenon which can also contribute to photon detection. In this talk, I will give an overview of the different investigations that are being carried out along with the latest experimental results.