Superconducting radiation detectors and their future perspectives

Cryodetectors with superconducting sensors have been actively developed and optimized during the past years. This review discusses the operating princ iples of the two detector concepts, superconducting tunnel junctions and lo w-temperature bolometer or calorimeter. Progress in research with cryodetec tors manifested itself by many successful device demonstrations and as a re sult, a shift in emphasis from pure detector optimization towards actual ap plications has been observed. Cryodetectors have been used for X-ray fluore scence, optical photon detection, mass spectroscopy of heavy molecules, etc . Nevertheless, there is still room for further improvement until the detec tors will have actually reached their theoretical limitations.