Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE
Development of superconducting single-photon detectors for integrated quantum photonics applications
Roberto Leoni, Alessandro Gaggero, J. P. Sprengers, F. Mattioli, Dondu Sahin, S. Jahanmiri Nejad, Johannes Beetz, M. Lermer, Martin Kamp, Sven Höfling, Andrea Fiore
Abstract
The implementation of single-photon detectors in waveguide photonic circuits will open the possibility of experiments in quantum regime that would otherwise be impossible to be implemented using bulk optics. Nanowire superconducting single-photon detectors (SSPDs) are good candidates for integration due to their relative ease of fabrication on top of GaAs heterostructures. In this paper we show the experimental demonstration of single-photon detectors, based on superconducting nanowires, fully integrated with GaAs/AlGaAs ridge waveguides. We will discuss all the major challenges surmounted and all the steps necessary to achieve these results.