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arXiv:1507.01743 · Optics Letters

Ultimate low system dark-count rate for superconducting nanowire single-photon detector

Hiroyuki Shibata, Kaoru Shimizu, Hiroki Takesue, 康弘 都倉

Published Jul 14, 2015• 144 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The dark-count rate (DCR) is a key parameter of single-photon detectors. By introducing a bulk optical band-pass filter mounted on a fiber-to-fiber optical bench cooled at 3 K and blocking down to 5 μm, we suppressed the DCR of a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector by more than three orders of magnitude. The DCR is limited by the blackbody radiation through a signal passband of 20-nm bandwidth. The figure of merit, system detection efficiency, and DCR were 2.7×10(11), 2.3%, and 10(-3) Hz, respectively. Narrowing the bandwidth to 100 GHz suppresses the DCR to 10(-4) Hz, and the figure of merit increases to 1.8×10(12).

DOI
10.1364/ol.40.003428

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The dark-count rate (DCR) is a key parameter of single-photon detectors. By introducing a bulk optical band-pass filter mounted on a fiber-to-fiber optical bench cooled at 3 K and blocking down to 5 μm, we suppressed the DCR of a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector by more than three orders of magnitude. The DCR is limited by the blackbody radiation through a signal passband of 20-nm bandwidth. The figure of merit, system detection efficiency, and DCR were 2.7×10(11), 2.3%, and 10(-3) Hz, respectively. Narrowing the bandwidth to 100 GHz suppresses the DCR to 10(-4) Hz, and the figure of merit increases to 1.8×10(12).
Suppressing the dark count rate (DCR) is one of the main issues in the development of the superconducting nanowire single-photon detector. Here, we study the effect of suppressing DCR using the various optical bandpass filters cooled at 3 K. The DCR, which is dominated by the background blackbody radiation at room temperature through an optical fiber, can be strongly suppressed by introducing the cold filter. Using the bulk commercial filter with the bandwidth of 10 nm and the high transmission above 85%, the DCR is improved about 29 dB with 2.4 dB of decrease in the system detection efficiency (η). The noise equivalent power reaches 1.5 × 10-18and the figure of merit reaches 1.8 × 109. These values are compared to the results using other type of filters.
Abstract Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) with both high system detection efficiency (SDE) and low dark count rate (DCR) play significant roles in quantum information processes and various applications. The background dark counts of SNSPDs originate from the room temperature blackbody radiation coupled to the device via a fiber. Therefore, a bandpass filter (BPF) operated at low temperature with minimal insert loss is necessary to suppress the background DCR. Herein, a low-loss BPF integrated on a single-mode fiber end-face was designed, fabricated and verified for the low temperature implement. The fiber end-face BPF was featured with a typical passband width about 40 nm in the 1550 nm telecom band and a peak transmittance of over 0.98. SNSPD with high SDE fabricated on a distributed Bragg reflector was coupled to the BPF. The device with such a BPF showed an SDE of 80% at a DCR of 0.5 Hz, measured at 2.1 K. Compared the same device without a BPF, the DCR was reduced by over 13 dB with an SDE decrease of <3%.
Dark count rate is one of the key parameters limiting the performance of the superconducting nanowire single photon detector (SNSPD). We have designed a multi-layer film bandpass filter that can be integrated onto the SNSPD to suppress the dark counts contributed by the stray light and blackbody radiation of the fiber. The bandpass filter is composed of 16 SiO(2)/Si bilayers deposited onto the backside of a thermally oxidized Si substrate. The substrate shows an excellent bandpass filter effect and provides a high transmittance of 88% at the central wavelength of the pass band, which is the same as that of the bare substrate. The SNSPDs fabricated on the substrate integrated with the bandpass filter show conspicuous wavelength-sensitive detection efficiency. The background dark count rate is reduced by two orders of magnitude to sub-Hz compared with the conventional SNSPD (a few tens of Hz). The detector exhibits a system detection efficiency of 56% at DCR of 1 Hz, with the measured minimal noise equivalent power reaching 2.0 × 10(-19) W/Hz(1/2).
We report the fabrication of a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SSPD or SNSPD) with an ultralow dark count rate. By introducing optical band-pass filters at the input of the SSPD and cooling the filters at 3 K, the dark count rate is reduced to less than 1/100 at low bias. An SSPD with 0.1 cps dark count rate and 5.6% system detection efficiency at 1550 nm wavelength is obtained. We show that a quantum key distribution (QKD) over 300 km of fiber is possible based on a numerical calculation assuming a differential phase shift QKD protocol implemented with our SSPDs.
Large active-area superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) coupled with multimode fibers (MMFs) can provide high light-gathering capacity, which is essential for free-space detection applications in photon-starved regimes. However, MMF-coupled SNSPDs often suffer from large system dark count rates (DCRsys) over kHz due to blackbody radiation of the MMF at room temperature. Such large DCRsys would significantly degrade signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the receiving system. This paper reports an MMF-coupled large-active-area SNSPD system with low DCRsys by using a homemade cryogenic MMF filter bench. The filter bench, which consists of lenses and optical filters, can provide a high transmittance of about 80% at the central wavelength of the passband (1550 ± 12.5 nm) and a wide blocking range from 500 nm to over 6000 nm at 40 K. With using the filter bench, the DCRsys of an MMF-coupled 9-pixel SNSPD array with an active area of 50 μm in diameter is greatly suppressed by 23 dB with 1 dB loss of system detection efficiency (SDE). The detector demonstrates an SDE of 51% at a DCRsys of 100 Hz for 1550 nm photons. Thus, SNR of the detector is enhanced by about 160 times and the noise equivalent power is improved to 3×10-19W/Hz1/2.
The realization of an ultralow-dark-count rate (DCR) along with the conservation of high detection efficiency (DE) is critical for many applications using single photon detectors in quantum information technologies, material sciences, and biological sensing. For this purpose, a fiber-coupled superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) with a meander-type niobium nitride nanowire (width: 50 nm) is studied. Precise measurements of the bias current dependence of DE are carried out for a wide spectral range (from 500 to 1650 nm in steps of 50 nm) using a white light source and a laser line Bragg tunable band-pass filter. An ultralow DCR (0.0015 cps) and high DE (32%) are simultaneously achieved by the SNSPD at a wavelength of 500 nm.