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Japanese Journal of Applied Physics

Investigation of the Performance of an Ultralow-Dark-Count Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detector

Shanthi Subashchandran, Ryo Okamoto, Labao Zhang, Akira Tanaka, Masayuki Okano, Lin Kang, Jian Chen, Peiheng Wu, Shigeki Takeuchi

Published Oct 1, 2013• 11 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The realization of an ultralow-dark-count rate (DCR) along with the conservation of high detection efficiency (DE) is critical for many applications using single photon detectors in quantum information technologies, material sciences, and biological sensing. For this purpose, a fiber-coupled superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) with a meander-type niobium nitride nanowire (width: 50 nm) is studied. Precise measurements of the bias current dependence of DE are carried out for a wide spectral range (from 500 to 1650 nm in steps of 50 nm) using a white light source and a laser line Bragg tunable band-pass filter. An ultralow DCR (0.0015 cps) and high DE (32%) are simultaneously achieved by the SNSPD at a wavelength of 500 nm.

DOI
10.7567/jjap.52.102801

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The realization of an ultralow-dark-count rate (DCR) along with the conservation of high detection efficiency (DE) is critical for many applications using single photon detectors in quantum information technologies, material sciences, and biological sensing. For this purpose, a fiber-coupled superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) with a meander-type niobium nitride nanowire (width: 50 nm) is studied. Precise measurements of the bias current dependence of DE are carried out for a wide spectral range (from 500 to 1650 nm in steps of 50 nm) using a white light source and a laser line Bragg tunable band-pass filter. An ultralow DCR (0.0015 cps) and high DE (32%) are simultaneously achieved by the SNSPD at a wavelength of 500 nm.
Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPD) have unique characteristics of ultra low dark counts and wide spectrum sensitivity. These natures are indispensable for the evaluation of ultra-broadband parametric fluorescence, which are used for the quantum optical coherence tomography and novel optical non-linear experiments. Here we report the spectral dependence of the detection efficiency of a meander type SNSPD device, having reduced strip width of 50 nm, over a wide spectrum range up to near infra-red wavelength. The fiber coupled, meander type device was fabricated using 6 nm thick Niobium nitride (NbN) nanowires of reduced strip width, 50 nm, patterned over a MgO substrate with active area of 10 x 10 μm2. A maximum efficiency of 32% at 500 nm, 30% at 600 nm, 16% at 800 nm, 10% at 1000 nm, and 1% at 1550 nm with the normalized bias current of 0.95 (bias 37 μA ) was observed at 4.2 K. The salient feature of the device is, it exhibits a very low dark count rate (DCR) of only 2 Hz at the standard operating bias of 37 μA and ultra low DCR of 0.01Hz at 34 μA. Moreover, at this reduced bias with 0.01Hz DCR, the detection efficiency is not appreciably decreased in the visible region (32% at 500 nm and 30% at 600 nm) and an order decrease is observed (0.1%) at 1550 nm. The noise equivalent power (NEP) is of the order 10-19 WHz-1/2 in the visible region and 10-17 WHz- 1/2 in the near IR region. Ultra-broad band parametric fluorescence of band width from 791 nm to 1610 nm generated by a quasi-phase matched (QPM) device was successfully detected with this SSPD.
We report the fabrication of a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SSPD or SNSPD) with an ultralow dark count rate. By introducing optical band-pass filters at the input of the SSPD and cooling the filters at 3 K, the dark count rate is reduced to less than 1/100 at low bias. An SSPD with 0.1 cps dark count rate and 5.6% system detection efficiency at 1550 nm wavelength is obtained. We show that a quantum key distribution (QKD) over 300 km of fiber is possible based on a numerical calculation assuming a differential phase shift QKD protocol implemented with our SSPDs.
We report on the performance of a fiber-coupled superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) from 4 K down to the ultralow temperature of 16 mK for a 1550 nm wave length. The system detection efficiency (DE) increased with de creasing the temperature and reached the considerably high value of 15% with a dark count rate less than 100 cps below 1.5 K, even without an optical cavity structure. We also observed saturation of the system DE in its bias current dependency at 16 mK, which indicates that the device DE of our SNSPD nearly reached intrinsic DE despite the device having a large active area of 20 μm × 20 μm. The dark count was finite even at 16 mK and the black body radiation becomes its dominant origin in the low temperatures for fiber-coupled devices.
Abstract Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) with both high system detection efficiency (SDE) and low dark count rate (DCR) play significant roles in quantum information processes and various applications. The background dark counts of SNSPDs originate from the room temperature blackbody radiation coupled to the device via a fiber. Therefore, a bandpass filter (BPF) operated at low temperature with minimal insert loss is necessary to suppress the background DCR. Herein, a low-loss BPF integrated on a single-mode fiber end-face was designed, fabricated and verified for the low temperature implement. The fiber end-face BPF was featured with a typical passband width about 40 nm in the 1550 nm telecom band and a peak transmittance of over 0.98. SNSPD with high SDE fabricated on a distributed Bragg reflector was coupled to the BPF. The device with such a BPF showed an SDE of 80% at a DCR of 0.5 Hz, measured at 2.1 K. Compared the same device without a BPF, the DCR was reduced by over 13 dB with an SDE decrease of <3%.
We present high performance fiber-coupled niobium titanium nitride superconducting nanowire single photon detectors fabricated on thermally oxidized silicon substrates. By applying a double sided cavity structure, simulated absorptance in the nanowire meander reached 97% at 1550 nm wavelength. The fabricated device showed a system detection efficiency (DE) of 74% at 1550 nm, dark count rate of 100 c/s, and a full width at half maximum timing jitter of 68 ps under a bias current of 18.0 μA with a practical Gifford-McMahon cryocooler system.
We present the performances of a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) in an ultralow-temperature region from 16 mK to 4 K. The system detection efficiency of the SNSPD showed saturation in the bias-current and temperature dependences, and reached the considerably high value of 15% for 100 Hz dark count rate below 1.4 K at a wavelength of 1550 nm even without an optical cavity structure. We found that the dark count exists even at 16 mK and black body radiation becomes its dominant origin in the low temperatures for fiber-coupled devices.