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arXiv:2108.07962 · Physical Review Applied

Impedance-Matched Differential Superconducting Nanowire Detectors

Marco Colangelo, Boris A. Korzh, Jason P. Allmaras, Andrew D. Beyer, Andrew Mueller, Ryan M. Briggs, Bruce Bumble, Marcus C. Runyan, Martin J. Stevens, Adam N. McCaughan, Di Zhu, S. J. Smith, Wolfgang H. Becker, Lautaro Narváez, Joshua C. Bienfang, Simone Frasca, Angel E. Velasco, Edward Ramirez, Alexander B. Walter, Ekkehart Schmidt, Emma E. Wollman, M. Spiropulu, Richard P. Mirin, Sae Woo Nam, Karl K. Berggren, Matthew D. Shaw

Published Apr 28, 2023• 39 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) are the highest-performance photon-counting technology in the near infrared, but traditional designs typically trade off between timing resolution and detection efficiency. The authors utilize transmission-line engineering and differential readout to achieve a design with high detection efficiency and low jitter simultaneously. This design also enables imaging capabilities and photon-number resolution, and is compatible with commercial time taggers. The device is a versatile solution for photon counting in various applications, including quantum computing, quantum communication, biomedicine, and ranging.

DOI
10.1103/physrevapplied.19.044093

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Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) are the highest-performance photon-counting technology in the near infrared, but traditional designs typically trade off between timing resolution and detection efficiency. The authors utilize transmission-line engineering and differential readout to achieve a design with high detection efficiency and low jitter simultaneously. This design also enables imaging capabilities and photon-number resolution, and is compatible with commercial time taggers. The device is a versatile solution for photon counting in various applications, including quantum computing, quantum communication, biomedicine, and ranging.
Superconducting Nanowire Single Photon Detectors (SNSPDs) excel at a wide variety of performance criteria for single photon counting. They combine unprecedented high detection efficiency, high timing resolution, high count rates, low intrinsic dark count rates, and are sensitive to ultraviolet through mid-infrared single-photons. At JPL, we are working on several projects to push the performance limits of SNSPDs to achieve higher maximum count rates, larger active areas, higher timing resolution, and a wider spectral range. Our recent advances enable new applications for dark matter detection, imaging, and space-to-ground communication and provide insight into the fundamental physics of single-photon detection in superconducting nanowires.
Single-photon detectors based on superconducting nanowires (SNSPDs) are promising technologies with good comprehensive performance, especially their excellent temporal resolution for applications in quantum precision measurements and time-varying ultimate detection. The response time of an SNSPD can be characterized by aspects of hotspot thermal relaxation and electrical relaxation, which are also responsible for the time jitter of the SNSPD. The factors affecting the temporal resolution of an SNSPD, the underlying physical mechanism, the intrinsic limit, and possible optimization methods are reviewed. The poor energy resolution and lack of photon number resolution for conventional SNSPDs can be overcome by using high-impedance readouts, novel device structures, characterization methods and, most importantly, SNSPD arrays, which can simultaneously further improve the temporal resolution. The study of the temporal and photon number resolution of SNSPDs helps reveal the underlying physics and is valuable for their new application in various practical engineering areas.
Simulations are run to optimize the ability to resolve the number of photons detected from the pulse height by a Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detector (SNSPD). This is set up in a manner that features an impedance-matching transmission line taper that provides a characteristic impedance which transitions from kΩ to 50 Ω, with the taper providing an effective load impedance that outputs pulses with not only larger amplitudes but also showed a distinct separation for multi-photon events. The first part of this project tries to computationally match the experimental results obtained by our collaborators at MIT. Once these results are achieved, we try to modify the device geometry to improve the key detector metrics which include timing jitter, dark count rate, reset time, and overall detection efficiency.
Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) have demonstrated advantages over traditional detectors in many fields [1]. Most fiber-coupled SNSPDs are coupled to single mode fibers, limiting their usability for applications where large surface area detectors are needed, for example fluorescence detection and satellite-based quantum communication [2][3]. Other important requirements for many applications are broadband detection efficiency, and low timing jitter [4]. So far, the increased meander length of multimode detectors, and the therefore increased kinetic inductance and number of imperfections due to film inhomogeneities have limited the timing jitter [5]. Moreover, combining low timing jitter with high detection efficiency and low dark count rate in one device is challenging due to the tradeoffs between different properties of SNSPDs [6]. In this paper, we achieved high efficiency and strong saturation over a broad wavelength range with a low timing jitter of 16.99 ps while maintaining a low dark count rate of < 0.2 Hz for an SNSPD coupled to a 50 µm core multimode fiber. To enhance the broadband absorption from 405 nm to 830 nm, detectors were fabricated on an optimized SiO2 cavity and Aluminum mirror. The geometry of the nanowire was also tuned to reach a good internal saturation of efficiency over the visible/NIR range but also to carry high current to get a large signal. Furthermore, a cryogenic readout amplifier was optimized to improve the signal to noise ratio and thus lead to high time resolution. Our devices can be readily used to enable higher resolution and faster quantum optics, bio-imaging, laser ranging and other optical experiments.
In the field of quantum technologies, the superconducting nanowire single photon detector(SNSPD) is nowadays well recognized as a key enabling device. SNSPDs combine high detectionefficiency in the visible and near IR spectral ranges, timing jitter as low as 10 ps, low dark count rate(<100 s−1) and cut-off frequency above 100 MHz. These features make it particularly attractive e.g. forfundamental quantum optics experiments and quantum communications.Plug-and-play SNSPDs with fibered optical access, as shown in Figure 1, are based on a meandernanowire defined by patterning an ultrathin (<10 nm) superconducting film. The device is designedso that absorption of a single photon is enough to brake locally the superconducting order, and toinduce a measurable change of the wire’s resistance. Until recently, such devices displayed two mainlimitations: (1) their efficiency did not exceed ~40% due to the limited optical absorption of the thinfilm; and (2) their response was strongly polarization-sensitive, due to the optical anisotropy of thenanowire. I will present two different approaches which enable to get very high (>90% [1]) andpolarization-insensitive [2,3] detection efficiency. We consider designs based on the integration of thenanowire within an optical microcavity (compatible with the plug-and-play configuration) or on topof an optical waveguide (preferred approach for integration in photonic circuits). I will finally discussnovel application prospects of such detectors, with emphasis on photon-number resolution.