Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) have been realized using an innovative parallel wire configuration. This configuration allows, at the same time, a large detection area and a fast response, with the additional advantage of large signal amplitudes. The detectors have been thoroughly characterized in terms of signal properties (amplitude, risetime and falltime), detector operation (latching and not latching) and quantum efficiency (at 850 nm). It has been shown that the parallel SNSPD is able to provide significantly higher maximum count rates for large area SNSPDs than meandered SNSPDs. Through a proper parallel wire configuration the increase in maximum count rate can be obtained without latching problems.
Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) have been realized using an innovative parallel wire configuration. This configuration allows, at the same time, a large detection area and a fast response, with the additional advantage of large signal amplitudes. The detectors have been thoroughly characterized in terms of signal properties (amplitude, risetime and falltime), detector operation (latching and not latching) and quantum efficiency (at 850 nm). It has been shown that the parallel SNSPD is able to provide significantly higher maximum count rates for large area SNSPDs than meandered SNSPDs. Through a proper parallel wire configuration the increase in maximum count rate can be obtained without latching problems.
Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) have shown to be promising in applications such as quantum communication and computation, quantum optics, imaging, metrology and sensing. They offer the advantages of a low dark count rate, high efficiency, a broadband response, a short time jitter, a high repetition rate, and no need for gated-mode operation. Several SNSPD designs have been proposed in literature. Here, we discuss the so-called parallel nanowires configurations. They were introduced with the aim of improving some SNSPD property like detection efficiency, speed, signal-to-noise ratio, or photon number resolution. Although apparently similar, the various parallel designs are not the same. There is no one design that can improve the mentioned properties all together. In fact, each design presents its own characteristics with specific advantages and drawbacks. In this work, we will discuss the various designs outlining peculiarities and possible improvements.
Recent progress in the development of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPD) has delivered ex-cellent performance, and their increased adoption has had a great impact on a range of applications. One of the key characteristic of SNSPDs is their detection rate, which is typically higher than other types of free-running single-photondetectors. The maximum achievable rate is limited by the detector recovery time after a detection, which itself is linked to the superconducting material properties and to the geometry of the meandered SNSPD. Arrays of detectors biased individually can be used to solve this issue, but this approach significantly increases both the thermal load in the cryo-stat and the need for time processing of the many signals, and this scales unfavorably with a large number of detectors. One potential scalable approach to increase the detection rate of individual detectors further is based on parallelizing smaller meander sections. In this way, a single detection temporarily disables only one subsection of the whole active area, thereby leaving the overall detection efficiency mostly unaffected. In practice however, cross-talk between parallel nanowires typically leads to latching, which prevents high detection rates. Here we show how this problem can be avoided through a careful design of the whole SNSPD structure. Using the same electronic readout as with conventional SNSPDs and a single coaxial line, we demonstrate detection rates over 200 MHz without any latching, and a fibre-coupled SDE as high as 77%, and more than 50% average SDE per photon at 50 MHz detection rate under continuous wave illumination.
Abstract Recent progress in the development of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPD) has delivered excellent performance, and their increased adoption has had a great impact on a range of applications. One of the key characteristic of SNSPDs is their detection rate, which is typically higher than other types of free-running single-photon detectors. The maximum achievable rate is limited by the detector recovery time after a detection, which itself is linked to the superconducting material properties and to the geometry of the meandered SNSPD. Arrays of detectors biased individually can be used to solve this issue, but this approach significantly increases both the thermal load in the cryostat and the need for time processing of the many signals, and this scales unfavorably with a large number of detectors. One potential scalable approach to increase the detection rate of individual detectors further is based on parallelizing smaller meander sections. In this way, a single detection temporarily disables only one subsection of the whole active area, thereby leaving the overall detection efficiency mostly unaffected. In practice however, cross-talk between parallel nanowires typically leads to latching, which prevents high detection rates. Here we show how this problem can be avoided through a careful design of the whole SNSPD structure. Using the same electronic readout as with conventional SNSPDs and a single coaxial line, we demonstrate detection rates over 200 MHz without any latching, and a fibre-coupled SDE as high as 77%, and more than 50% average SDE per photon at 50 MHz detection rate under continuous wave illumination.
Ultrathin NbN nanowires is the material of choice for superconducting single photon detectors (SSPD) due to the good efficiency, dark count rate and timing jitter at 1550 nm wavelength obtained. These performance parameters are achieved using nanowires a few nanometers thick and 100 nm wide patterned into a meander shape in order to achieve area coverage. The meander shape effectively makes the SSPD of a single very long nanowire in turn giving it a significant inductance which limits the maximum count rate of the detector. Recently, we demonstrated how one can exploit a cascade switch to the normal state of nanowires connected in parallel to significantly reduce the SSPD inductance and increase the signal amplitude. Here we present how one can configure SSPDs that uses multiple cascade switches to the normal state. We show how this principle can be used to expand the SSPD coverage area with a very limited increase in detector inductance with area. Finally we discuss our first results obtained with SSPD based on the multiple cascade switch principle, showing correct operation, increased operational bias range and increased signal pulse amplitudes.
An analysis of different strategies for increasing the maximum count rate of superconducting single photon detectors using parallel nanowires is performed with particular emphasis on the expected behaviour when the detector area is increased. We find that for a serial connection of blocks of parallel nanowires, the maximum count rate decreases with the square root of the detector area, whereas it decreases proportional to the detector area for current meandered detectors. Using this design we estimate that a signal pulse falltime of 7.8 ns for a 84 × 84 µm2 parallel detector based on current material parameters should be obtainable. We argue that the slow decrease of count rate with detector area might permit detectors based on parallel nanowires to fully exploit the available cooling power.
Superconducting series nanowire single-photon detectors (SNDs) have been used for resolving photon numbers. But it can also exhibit a higher counting rate than a single superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD), because the serial architecture allows multiple detectors working in parallel and the inductance of each pixel is reduced. In this paper, we found each pixel of the SND could reset fast although the whole detector took a much longer time for recovering. Therefore, the speed of an SND with a large kinetic inductance of 1.25 μH was characterized and compared to a standard SNSPD with the same total inductance. By measuring the detected photon rate over the input photon rate, we obtained a photon counting rate enhancement by 7.5 times. Meanwhile, the timing jitter of the SND was 63 ps at single photon detection regime. Our results show that the series structure and the readout scheme are quite practical in realizing high speed single-photon detectors besides resolving photon numbers.