The dynamics of 'hotspot forming' high-energy quasiparticles in a superconducting nanowire

Energetic quasiparticles possess a collection of quantum characteristics that operate in a particle-like way in superconducting nanostructures, and they can undergo relaxation by involving many cascaded interactions between electrons, phonons and Cooper pairs. These interactions are significant to the performance of devices such as qubits or photon detectors, yet they remain to be well understood via quasiparticle regulated experiments. Typically, such experiments have incorporated solid-state tunnel junctions with a fixed tunnel barrier.