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Journal of Modern Optics

Ultrafast superconducting single-photon detector

Gregory N Gol'tsman, Alexander A. Korneev, Alexander V. Divochiy, Olga V. Minaeva, Michael A. Tarkhov, N. Kaurova, Vadim Aleksandrovich Seleznev, B. Voronov, О В Окунев, A.V. Antipov, К. В. Смирнов, Yu. B. Vachtomin, I. Milostnaya, Чулкова Галина Меркурьевна

Published Sep 10, 2009• 26 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The state-of-the-art of the NbN nanowire superconducting single-photon detector technology (SSPD) is presented. The SSPDs exhibit excellent performance at 2 K temperature: 30% quantum efficiency from visible to infrared, negligible dark count rate, single-photon sensitivity up to 5.6 µm. The recent achievements in the development of GHz counting rate devices with photon-number resolving capability is presented.

DOI
10.1080/09500340903277750

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The state-of-the-art of the NbN nanowire superconducting single-photon detector technology (SSPD) is presented. The SSPDs exhibit excellent performance at 2 K temperature: 30% quantum efficiency from visible to infrared, negligible dark count rate, single-photon sensitivity up to 5.6 µm. The recent achievements in the development of GHz counting rate devices with photon-number resolving capability is presented.
We present an overview of the state-of-the-art of NbN superconducting single-photon detectors (SSPDs). Our devices exhibit quantum efficiency (QE) of up to 30% in near-infrared wavelength and 0.4% at 5 mum, with a dark-count rate that can be as low as 10-4s-1. The SSPD structures integrated with lambda/4 microcavities achieve a QE of 60% at telecommunication, 1550-nm wavelength. We have also developed a new generation of SSPDs that possess the QE of large-active-area devices, but, simultaneously, are characterized by low kinetic inductance that allows achieving short response times and the GHz-counting rate with picosecond timing jitter. The improvements presented in the SSPD development, such as fiber-coupled SSPDs, make our detectors most attractive for high-speed quantum communications and quantum computing.
Superconducting single-photon detector (SSPD) is a planar nanostructure patterned from 4-nm-thick NbN film deposited on sapphire substrate. The sensitive element of the SSPD is 100-nm-wide NbN strip. The device is operated at liquid helium temperature. Absorption of a photon leads to a local suppression of superconductivity producing subnanosecond-long voltage pulse. In infrared (at 1550 nm and longer wavelengths) SSPD outperforms avalanche photodiodes in terms of detection efficiency (DE), dark counts rate, maximum counting rate and timing jitter. Efficient single-mode fibre coupling of the SSPD enabled its usage in many applications ranging from single-photon sources research to quantum cryptography. Recently we managed to improve the SSPD performance and measured 25% detection efficiency at 1550 nm wavelength and dark counts rate of 10 s-1. We also improved photon-number resolving SSPD (PNR-SSPD) which realizes a spatial multiplexing of incident photons enabling resolving of up to 4 simultaneously absorbed photons. Another improvement is the increase of the photon absorption using a λ/4 microcavity integrated with the SSPD. And finally in our strive to increase the DE at longer wavelengths we fabricated SSPD with the strip almost twice narrower compared to the standard 100 nm and demonstrated that in middle infrared (about 3 μm wavelength) these devices have DE several times higher compared to the traditional SSPDs.
We present our latest generation of ultrafast superconducting NbN single-photon detectors (SSPD) capable of photon-number resolving (PNR). We have developed, fabricated and tested a multi-sectional design of NbN nanowire structures. The novel SSPD structures consist of several meander sections connected in parallel, each having a resistor connected in series. The novel SSPDs combine 10 μm × 10 μm active areas with a low kinetic inductance and PNR capability. That resulted in a significantly reduced photoresponse pulse duration, allowing for GHz counting rates. The detector's response magnitude is directly proportional to the number of incident photons, which makes this feature easy to use. We present experimental data on the performances of the PNR SSPDs. The PNR SSPDs are perfectly suited for fibreless free-space telecommunications, as well as for ultrafast quantum cryptography and quantum computing.
Superconducting single photons detectors (SSPDs) have emerged in recent years as a promising alternative for fast and sensitive infrared detectors working in the photon counting mode. In particular, those detectors combine very low dark count rates (below 1 Hz), high speed (above 1 GHz), photon number resolution and reasonable quantum efficiency (10% at telecom wavelengths). They already found applications in quantum cryptography systems and integrated circuit failure analysis, but could also be used as ultimate sensors in matrix configurations. We show here the optimization of SSPD fabrication and their optical metrology at CEA. SSPD are fabricated by patterning a 80 nm wide nanowire in a very thin (4 nm) NbN film on sapphire, forming a pixel of several microns size. A cryogenic all-fibered optoelectronic system has been developed and allows precise metrology of the optical performances of SSPD. When biasing near the critical current of the nanowire, we demonstrate a detection quantum efficiency of 8% at 1.55 µm, which is also found to be strongly polarization dependent. This quantum efficiency being limited by optical absorption, we propose a prism coupling based absorption enhancing structure that allows reaching 100% quantum efficiency.
We present a new class of single-photon devices for counting of both visible and infrared photons. Our superconducting single-photon detectors (SSPDs) are characterized by the intrinsic quantum efficiency (QE) reaching up to 100%, above 10 GHz counting rate, and negligible dark counts. The detection mechanism is based on the photon-induced hotspot formation and subsequent appearance of a transient resistive barrier across an ultrathin and submicron-wide superconducting stripe. The devices are fabricated from 3.5-nm-thick NbN films and operate at 4.2 K, well below the NbN superconducting transition temperature. Various continuous and pulsed laser sources in the wavelength range from 0.4 μm up to >3 μm were implemented in our experiments, enabling us to determine the detector QE in the photon-counting mode, response time, and jitter. For our best 3.5-nm-thick, 10×10 μm2-area devices, QE was found to reach almost 100% for any wavelength shorter than about 800 nm. For longer-wavelength (infrared) radiation, QE decreased exponentially with the photon wavelength increase. Time-resolved measurements of our SSPDs showed that the system-limited detector response pulse width was below 150 ps. The system jitter was measured to be 35 ps. In terms of the counting rate, jitter, and dark counts, the NbN SSPDs significantly outperform their semiconductor counterparts. Already identifeid and implemented applications of our devices range from noninvasive testing of semiconductor VLSI circuits to free-space quantum communications and quantum cryptography.