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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC)

Nanowire superconducting single-photon detectors integrated with optical microcavities based on GaAs substrates

S. Jahanmiri Nejad, Alessandro Gaggero, Francesco Marsili, F. Mattioli, Roberto Leoni, David Bitauld, Dondu Sahin, G. J. Hamhuis, Richard Nötzel, Rosendo Sanjinés, Andrea Fiore

Published May 1, 2011• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

In this work, the authors report on the successful integration of superconducting single photon detector (SSPD) with optical cavity based on GaAs/AlAs distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) to enhance their detection efficiency. The cavity consists of a Bragg reflector on a GaAs substrate as the bottom mirror and a weak epitaxial GaAs/air interface acting as the top mirror. The DBR is grown by molecular beam epitaxy and is designed to be resonant at 1309 nm at 4K.

DOI
10.1109/cleoe.2011.5943155

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We demonstrate efficient nanowire superconducting single photon detectors (SSPDs) based on NbN thin films grown on GaAs. NbN films ranging from 3 to 5 nm in thickness have been deposited by dc magnetron sputtering on GaAs substrates at 350 °C. These films show superconducting properties comparable to similar films grown on sapphire and MgO. In order to demonstrate the potential for monolithic integration, SSPDs were fabricated and measured on GaAs/AlAs Bragg mirrors, showing a clear cavity enhancement, with a peak quantum efficiency of 18.3% at λ=1300 nm and T=4.2 K.
Abstract This paper presents the development of a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) integrated into a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) with a design center wavelength of 830 nm and a bandwidth of 200 nm. This SNSPD is made of a superconducting niobium nitride (NbN) thin film that is produced using plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition. The DBR is made of 15 alternating layers of silicon nitride and silicon oxide that are produced through plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The reflection efficiency of the mirror is 90% at a wavelength of 830 nm. For sufficient optical coupling, an optical micro-connector optimized for multimode or single-mode optical fibers with a diameter of 128 μm was formed using two-photon polymerization techniques. The niobium nitride film was deposited onto the DBR surface in-situ in two separate reactors connected by a vacuum transfer. The in-situ technique of deposition of a superconducting niobium nitride film and a DBR has allowed achieving a system detection efficiency of 90% at a wavelength of 830 nm and a dark count rate of 10 s−1 at a temperature of 2.5 K. Additionally, the detector jitter was 50 ps.
Abstract We here report a high system detection efficiency (SDE) superconducting single-photon detector (SSPD) at 2 μm wavelength. The device integrates a SiO 2 /Ta 2 O 5 distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) and a sandwich-structured double-layer NbN nanowire to enhance the optical absorption efficiency. A cold development technique is implemented to optimize the superconducting nanowires with sub-40-nm linewidths, thus enhancing the intrinsic detection efficiency (IDE). The fabricated SSPD shows an SDE exceeding 90% at 2 μm wavelength. Moreover, the detector allows an operational working temperature of 2.2 K provided by a compact GM cryo-cooler. This detector delivers excellent performance at the 2 μm wavelength, and its optimized structural design implies promising potential for extending detection toward longer infrared bands. It thus holds value for advancing high-sensitivity quantum technologies, mid-infrared optical communications, and dark matter detection research.
Abstract In this paper several designs to maximize the absorption efficiency of superconducting-nanowire single-photon detectors are investigated. Using a simple optical cavity consisting of a gold mirror and a SiO 2 layer, the absorption efficiency can be boosted to over 97%: this result is confirmed experimentally by the realization of an NbTiN-based detector having an overall system detection efficiency of 85% at 1.31 μ m. Calculations show that by sandwiching the nanowire between two dielectric Bragg reflectors, unity absorption (>99.9%) could be reached at the peak wavelength for optimized structures. To achieve broadband high efficiency, a different approach is considered: a waveguide-coupled detector. The calculations performed in this work show that, by correctly dimensioning the waveguide and the nanowire, polarization-insensitive detectors absorbing more than 95% of the injected photons over a wavelength range of several hundred nm can be designed. We propose a detector design making use of GaN/AlN waveguides, since these materials allow lattice-matched epitaxial deposition of Nb(Ti)N films and are transparent on a very wide wavelength range.