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Optics Letters

Ultrafast three-photon counting in a photomultiplier tube

Amir Nevet, Alex Hayat, Meir Orenstein

Published Feb 24, 2011• 23 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate experimentally ultrafast three-photon counting by three-photon absorption in a GaAsP photomultiplier tube at the wavelength range of 1800-1900 nm, and analyze its sensitivity and time response. Pulse energy of ∼500 fJ is shown to be detectable for ultrafast 170 fs pulses. The presented three-photon counter may serve as a unique tool for ultrafast quantum state characterization as well as for ultrasensitive third-order temporal measurements.

DOI
10.1364/ol.36.000725

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We demonstrate experimentally ultrafast three-photon counting by three-photon absorption in a GaAsP photomultiplier tube at the wavelength range of 1800-1900 nm, and analyze its sensitivity and time response. Pulse energy of ∼500 fJ is shown to be detectable for ultrafast 170 fs pulses. The presented three-photon counter may serve as a unique tool for ultrafast quantum state characterization as well as for ultrasensitive third-order temporal measurements.
Photon counting is a cornerstone of quantum optics. Here, we demonstrate precisely counting from 0 to over 9000 photons, beating the Poisson noise limit by at least 4.1 dB4.1~\mathrm{dB}4.1 dB across this range. We achieve sub-single-photon precision up to 276 photons per pulse. To do so, we multiplex eight intrinsically photon-number-resolving superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors across 128 temporal modes. We use a model-informed characterization of each of the 1024 detection bins, for optimal precision. We perform quantum detector tomography to reconstruct the positive operator valued measures (POVMs) of the complete device, which consists of 1.38⋅1081.38\cdot10^81.38⋅108 matrix elements. At the repetition rate of our experiment of 80 kHz80~\mathrm{kHz}80 kHz, we can precisely count photons corresponding to an optical power of approximately 71 pW71~\mathrm{pW}71 pW, bridging the gap from single-photon measurements to high-sensitivity optical power meters. A photon-number-resolving detector of this size, and the tools used to analyze it, will become increasingly important to characterize large quantum states, as well as tasks in precision metrology and optical power standards.
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.