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Superconducting nanowire photon number resolving detector at telecom wavelength

Francesco Marsili, David Bitauld, Alexander V. Divochiy, Alessandro Gaggero, Roberto Leoni, F. Mattioli, Alexander A. Korneev, Vadim Aleksandrovich Seleznev, N. Kaurova, Olga V. Minaeva, Gregory N Gol'tsman, Konstantinos G. Lagoudakis, M. Benkahoul, Francis Lévy, Andrea Fiore

Published May 4, 2008• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate a photon-number-resolving (PNR) detector, based on parallel superconducting nanowires, capable of resolving up to 5 photons in the telecommunication wavelength range, with sensitivity and speed far exceeding existing approaches. © 2008 Optical Society of America.
DOI
10.1109/qels.2008.4553065

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Abstract In recent years, photon-number-resolving (PNR) detectors have attracted great interest, mainly because they can play a key role in diverse application fields. A PNR detector with a large dynamic range would represent an ideal photon detector, bringing the linear response of conventional analogue detectors down to the single-photon level. Several technologies, such as InGaAs single photon avalanche detectors (SPADs), arrays of silicon photomultipliers, InGaAs SPADs with self-differencing circuits and transition edge sensors have shown photon number resolving capability. Superconducting nanowires provide free-running single-photon sensitivity from visible to mid-infrared frequencies, low dark counts, excellent timing resolution (<60 ps) and short dead time (∼10 ns), at an easily accessible temperature (2–3 K), but they do not inherently resolve the photon number. In this framework, PNR detectors based on arrays of superconducting nanowires have been proposed. In this article we describe a number of methods and device configurations that have been pursued to obtain PNR capability using superconducting nanowire detectors.
Photon-number-resolving (PNR) is an important functionality in many applications. The traditional single photon detectors (SNSPDs) operated with the conventional readout scheme does not have the PNR functionality. In this paper, we demonstrate a superconducting photon-number-resolving detector operating at the visible wavelength regime, based on the serial connection of six superconducting nanowires. The results of our 6-element PNR device show clear evidence of n-photons differentiation with n ranging from 1 to 6. The system detection efficiency reaches 54% with the dark counts rate below 10 Hz at 660 nm. The demonstrated 6-element PNR device does not require a complex readout circuit compared with the SNSPD array device, and is expected to have wider applications in addition to imaging and communication.
Standard linear optical detectors have a maximum sensitivity in the few hundreds of photons range, limited by amplifier noise. On the other hand, single photon detectors, which are the most sensitive detectors, are strongly nonlinear: One or more photons result in the same output signal. Photon number resolving (PNR) detectors, which have the ability to discriminate the number of photons in a weak optical pulse, are of great importance in the field of quantum information processing and quantum cryptography. Moreover, a PNR detector with large dynamic range can cover the gap between these two detection modes. Such detectors are greatly desirable not only in quantum information science and technology, but also in any application dealing with low light levels. In this work, we propose a novel approach to photon number resolving detectors based on spatial multiplexing of nanowire superconducting single-photon detectors. In the proposed approach, N superconducting nanowires, each connected in parallel to an integrated resistor, are connected in series. Photon absorption in a nanowire switches its bias current to the parallel resistor, forming a voltage pulse across it. The sum of these voltages, proportional to the number of absorbed photons, is measured at the output. The use of a cryogenic preamplifier with high input impedance for the read-out increases the linearity, the signal to noise ratio, and the speed. With this combination, we expect to be able to count up to few tens of photons with high fidelity, excellent timing resolution, and very high sensitivity in the telecommunication wavelength range.
We present a new photon number resolving detector (PNR), the Parallel Nanowire Detector (PND), which uses spatial multiplexing on a subwavelength scale to provide a single electrical output proportional to the photon number. The basic structure of the PND is the parallel connection of several NbN superconducting nanowires (≈100 nm wide, few nm thick), folded in a meander pattern. Electrical and optical equivalents of the device were developed in order to gain insight on its working principle. PNDs were fabricated on 3–4 nm thick NbN films grown on sapphire (substrate temperature T S = 900°C) or MgO (T S = 400°C) substrates by reactive magnetron sputtering in an Ar/N2 gas mixture. The device performance was characterized in terms of speed and sensitivity. The photoresponse shows a full width at half maximum (FWHM) as low as 660 ps. PNDs showed counting performance at 80 MHz repetition rate. Building the histograms of the photoresponse peak, no multiplication noise buildup is observable and a one-photon quantum efficiency can be estimated to be η ∼ 3% (at 700 nm wavelength and 4.2 K temperature). The PND significantly outperforms existing PNR detectors in terms of simplicity, sensitivity, speed, and multiplication noise.