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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Low-noise PPLN-based single-photon detector

Xu Hai, Lijun Ma, Oliver Slattery, Xiao Hong Tang

Published Sep 9, 2007• 13 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This paper describes the detection of single photons, which have been transmitted through standard fiber at the telecom wavelength of 1310 nm. Following transmission, the 1310-nm photon is up-converted to 710 nm in a periodical-poled LiNbO3 (PPLN) waveguide and then detected by a silicon-based avalanche photodiode (Si-APD). The overall detection efficiency of the detector is 20%. We have also characterized the sensitivity of the PPLN's efficiency to temperature and wavelength changes. We focused on the noise property of the up-conversion detector. Without classical channel co-propagation, the dark count rate is 2.2 kHz, which is lower than current up-conversion detectors by more than one order of magnitude. The up-conversion detector is then applied to a QKD system, which is characterized and is shown to have a very strong performance.

DOI
10.1117/12.734345

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This paper describes the detection of single photons, which have been transmitted through standard fiber at the telecom wavelength of 1310 nm. Following transmission, the 1310-nm photon is up-converted to 710 nm in a periodical-poled LiNbO3 (PPLN) waveguide and then detected by a silicon-based avalanche photodiode (Si-APD). The overall detection efficiency of the detector is 20%. We have also characterized the sensitivity of the PPLN's efficiency to temperature and wavelength changes. We focused on the noise property of the up-conversion detector. Without classical channel co-propagation, the dark count rate is 2.2 kHz, which is lower than current up-conversion detectors by more than one order of magnitude. The up-conversion detector is then applied to a QKD system, which is characterized and is shown to have a very strong performance.
Quantum information systems are commonly operated in conventional communication bands (1310 and 1550 nm) over an optical fiber to take advantage of low transmission loss. However, the detection and spectral measurement of single photons in these communication bands are limited due to high noise and low sensitivity of single photon detectors in the wavelength ranges. To demonstrate high efficiency detection and high sensitivity spectral measurement, we have implemented a single photon detector and a spectrometer based on frequency up-conversion technology. This detector and spectrometer uses a 5-cm periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) waveguide and a tunable pump laser around 1550 nm, to convert signal photons around 1310 to 710 nm. The converted photons are then detected by a silicon-based avalanche photodiode (APD). The overall detection efficiency of the single photon detector is as high as 32%, which is three times higher than commercial InGaAs APDs. The sensitivity of the spectrometer is measured to be −126 dBm, which is at least three orders-of-magnitude better than any commercial optical spectrum analyzer in this wavelength range.
We developed low-noise up-conversion single photon detectors for 1310 nm based on a periodically-poled LiNbO3 (PPLN) waveguide. The low-noise feature is achieved by using a pulsed optical pump at a wavelength longer than the signal wavelength. The detectors were used in a quantum key distribution (QKD) systems based on polarization encoding, measurement for entangled photon pairs and spectrum measurement at single photon levels. In this paper, the overall detection efficiency and noise level of the detectors are characterized and the polarization and wavelength sensitivity of the detection efficiency is analyzed. The applications of this detector in quantum information systems are also described.
High-performance single-photon detectors (SPDs) at 1550-nm band are critical for fiber-based quantum communications. Among many types of SPDs, the up-conversion SPDs based on periodically poled lithium niobate waveguides are of great interest. Combined with a strong pump laser, the telecom single-photons are converted into short wavelength ones and detected by silicon-based SPDs. However, due to the difficulty of precise controlling waveguide profile, the direct coupling between a single-mode fiber and the waveguide is not efficient. Here by utilizing fiber taper with proper diameter, optimal mode-matching is achieved and coupling efficiency up to 93% is measured. With an optimized design, a system detection efficiency of 36% and noise counting rate of 90 cps are realized. The maximum detection efficiency is characterized as 40% with a noise counting rate of 200 cps. Numerical simulation results indicate that our device can significantly improve the performance of QKD and extend the communication distance longer than 200 km.
We propose a method of single photon detection of infrared (IR) photons at potentially higher efficiencies and lower noise than allowed by traditional IR band avalanche photodiodes (APDs). By up-converting the photon from the IR, e.g. 1550 nm, to a visible wavelength in a nonlinear crystal, we can utilize the much higher efficiency of silicon APDs at these wavelengths. We have used a periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) crystal and a pulsed 1064 nm Nd:YAG laser to perform the up-conversion to a 631 nm photon. We observed conversion efficiencies as high as ∼ 80%, and demonstrated scaling down to the single photon level while maintaining a background of 3 ×s; 10−4 dark counts per count. We also propose a 2-crystal extension of this scheme, whereby orthogonal polarizations may be up-converted coherently, thus enabling complete quantum state transduction of arbitrary states.
We demonstrate upconversion-assisted single-photon detection for the 1.55-μm telecommunications band based on a periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) waveguide pumped by a monolithic PPLN optical parametric oscillator. We achieve an internal conversion efficiency of 86%, which results in an overall system detection efficiency of 37%, with excess noise as low as 10(3) counts s(-1). We measure the dark count rate versus the upconversion pump-signal frequency separation and find the results to be consistent with noise photon generation by spontaneous anti-Stokes Raman scattering. These results enable detailed design guidelines for the development of low-noise quantum frequency conversion systems, which will be an important component of fiber-optic quantum networks.