Title: Thermoelectric radiation detector based on superconductor/ferromagnet systems,
Abstract: We suggest a new type of an ultrasensitive detector of electromagnetic fields
exploiting the giant thermoelectric effect recently found in
superconductor/ferromagnet hybrid structures. Compared to other types of
superconducting detectors where the detected signal is based on variations of
the detector impedance, the thermoelectric detector has the advantage of
requiring no external driving fields. This becomes especially relevant in
multi-pixel detectors where the number of bias lines and the heating induced by
them becomes an issue. We propose different material combinations to implement
the detector and provide a detailed analysis of its sensitivity and speed. In
particular, we perform to our knowledge the first proper noise analysis that
includes the cross correlation between heat and charge current noise and
thereby describes also thermoelectric detectors with a large thermoelectric
figure of merit.