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Scientific Reports

Waveguide integrated superconducting single-photon detectors with high internal quantum efficiency at telecom wavelengths

Oliver Kahl, Simone Ferrari, Vadim V. Kovalyuk, Gregory N Gol'tsman, Alexander A. Korneev, Wolfram H. P. Pernice

Published Jun 10, 2015• 111 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) provide high efficiency for detecting individual photons while keeping dark counts and timing jitter minimal. Besides superior detection performance over a broad optical bandwidth, compatibility with an integrated optical platform is a crucial requirement for applications in emerging quantum photonic technologies. Here we present SNSPDs embedded in nanophotonic integrated circuits which achieve internal quantum efficiencies close to unity at 1550 nm wavelength. This allows for the SNSPDs to be operated at bias currents far below the critical current where unwanted dark count events reach milli-Hz levels while on-chip detection efficiencies above 70% are maintained. The measured dark count rates correspond to noise-equivalent powers in the 10(-19) W/Hz(-1/2) range and the timing jitter is as low as 35 ps. Our detectors are fully scalable and interface directly with waveguide-based optical platforms.

DOI
10.1038/srep10941

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Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) provide high efficiency for detecting individual photons while keeping dark counts and timing jitter minimal. Besides superior detection performance over a broad optical bandwidth, compatibility with an integrated optical platform is a crucial requirement for applications in emerging quantum photonic technologies. Here we present SNSPDs embedded in nanophotonic integrated circuits which achieve internal quantum efficiencies close to unity at 1550 nm wavelength. This allows for the SNSPDs to be operated at bias currents far below the critical current where unwanted dark count events reach milli-Hz levels while on-chip detection efficiencies above 70% are maintained. The measured dark count rates correspond to noise-equivalent powers in the 10(-19) W/Hz(-1/2) range and the timing jitter is as low as 35 ps. Our detectors are fully scalable and interface directly with waveguide-based optical platforms.
Fast and efficient detection of single photons with high timing accuracy is a crucial requirement in most quantum optics experiments and enables novel sensing and imaging solutions. Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPD) achieve technology-leading performance in terms of detection efficiency, dark count rate, timing jitter, and detector dead times. However, conventional SNSPDs with high system detection efficiency typically rely on resonant enhancement of the absorption efficiency, thus only achieving attractive detector benchmarks over narrow spectral windows. Waveguide-integrated SNSPDs allow for leveraging the wideband material absorption in superconducting nanowires by absorbing light in a traveling-wave geometry but have been limited to low system detection efficiencies due to interface losses when coupling to optical fibers. Here, we show how high system detection efficiencies of 22%–73% are realized over a broad wavelength range from 532 nm to 1640 nm in a single waveguide-integrated SNSPD device. We accomplish efficient coupling between optical fibers and waveguide-integrated nanowire detectors by employing a 3D interface, produced in direct laser writing, that relies on total internal reflection for achieving a broad transmission bandwidth. We further find low timing jitter of 25.7 ps and detector decay times of 9.8 ns, allowing for single-photon counting with high repetition rates up to 100 MHz. Our work paves the way for an efficient single-photon detector solution that combines the spectral requirements of an extremely wide range of quantum optics experiments in a single device. The coupling approach and SNSPD-integration with nanophotonic circuits are further well-suited for realizing large-scale detector arrays.
We present an overview of recent results for new generation of infrared and optical superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) that has already demonstrated a performance that makes them devices-of-choice for many applications. SNSPDs provide high efficiency for detecting individual photons while keeping dark counts and timing jitter minimal. Besides superior detection performance over a broad optical bandwidth, SNSPDs are also compatible with an integrated optical platform as a crucial requirement for applications in emerging quantum photonic technologies. By embedding SNSPDs in nanophotonic circuits we realize waveguide integrated single photon detectors which unite all desirable detector properties in a single device.
Nanophotonic integrated circuits are emerging as a promising platform for quantum photonics. A key building block are waveguide integrated detectors with superior performance. Detectors based on superconductor nanowires (SNSPDs) attached to optical waveguides have been shown to provide high efficiency and good timing performance, as well as broad bandwidth. To move towards applications in high bandwidth quantum communication and processing, ultrafast single-photon detectors with high efficiency are needed. The speed of meander type SNSPDs is limited because the required high absorption efficiency necessitates long nanowires deposited on top of the waveguide. This enhances the kinetic inductance and makes the detectors slow. We overcome this problem by aligning the nanowire perpendicular to the waveguide to realize devices with a length below 1 µm. By integrating the nanowire into a photonic crystal cavity, we recover high absorption efficiency, thus enhancing the detection efficiency by more than an order of magnitude. Our cavity enhanced superconducting nanowire detectors are fully embedded in silicon nanophotonic circuits and efficiently detect single photons at telecom wavelengths. The detectors possess sub-nanosecond decay (~ 120 ps) and recovery times (~ 510 ps), and thus show potential for GHz count rates at low timing jitter (~ 32 ps).
Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors are an enabling technology for modern quantum information science and are gaining attractiveness for the most demanding photon counting tasks in other fields. Embedding such detectors in photonic integrated circuits enables additional counting capabilities through nanophotonic functionalization. Here, we show how a scalable number of waveguide-integrated superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors can be interfaced with independent fiber optic channels on the same chip. Our plug-and-play detector package is hosted inside a compact and portable closed-cycle cryostat providing cryogenic signal amplification for up to 64 channels. We demonstrate state-of-the-art multi-channel photon counting performance with average system detection efficiency of (40.5 ± 9.4)% and dark count rate of (123 ± 34) Hz for 32 individually addressable detectors at minimal noise-equivalent power of (5.1 ± 1.2) · 10−18 W/Hz. Our detectors achieve timing jitter as low as 26 ps, which increases to (114 ± 17) ps for high-speed multi-channel operation using dedicated time-correlated single photon counting electronics. Our multi-channel single photon receiver offers exciting measurement capabilities for future quantum communication, remote sensing, and imaging applications.
Single photon detectors are a vital part of many emerging technologies which harness the quantum properties of light to benefit the fields of communication, computation and sensing. Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) offer high detection efficiency, low dark count rates, low timing jitter, and infrared sensitivity that are required by the most demanding single photon counting applications. This thesis presents SNSPDs fabricated and tested at the University of Glasgow that are integrated with optical structures which enable enhanced detection efficiency and integration with waveguide circuit technology. The monolithic integration of waveguide circuit components presents a route towards realisation of an optical quantum information processor that has the stability and scalability to perform the demanding tasks of quantum computation. A novel process is introduced for incorporating superconducting detectors with single mode gallium arsenide waveguides and quantum dot single photon sources. Together these elements would enable the generation of quantum states of light which could be manipulated and detected on a single chip. Detectors are patterned in NbTiN thin superconducting films on to suspended nanobeam waveguides with better than 50 nm alignment accuracy. Low temperature electrical and optical testing confirms the detectors’ single photon sensitivity under direct illumination as well as to waveguide coupled light. Measured detectors were found to have internal registering efficiencies of 6.8 ± 2.4%. Enhancing absorption of photons into thin superconducting films is vital to the creation of high efficiency superconducting single photon detectors. Fabricating an SNSPD on a dielectric mirror creates a partial cavity that can be tailored to enhance detection of light at specific wavelengths. Devices have been fabricated and tested in this thesis with enhanced detection efficiency at infrared and visible wavelengths for quantum cryptography, remote sensing and life science applications. Detectors fabricated in NbTiN on GaAs/AlGaAs Bragg mirrors exhibited a system detection efficiency of 1.5% at 1500 nm wavelength for the best device measured. SNSPDs were also fabricated in NbN on aperiodic dielectric mirrors with a range of different bandwidths. A peak system detection efficiency of 82.7% at 808 nm wavelength was recorded.
With recent advances in quantum technologies for applications such as communication, cryptography, computing, metrology and sensing, the performance and scalability of single-photon detection as a vital key component is becoming increasingly important. At the same time, ongoing efforts in the development of high-performance photonic integrated circuits (PIC) benefit the miniaturization and scalability of these quantum technologies. Waveguide-integrated superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (WI-SNSPDs) allow to combine excellent performance metrics, such as high detection efficiency, low dark-count rates and low timing jitter below 20 ps with the scalability and functionality that PIC platforms such as Si3N4 provide. We have previously demonstrated broadband efficient single-photon detection with a single device over a range from visible to mid-infrared wavelengths and ultra-fast detector recovery times allowing for up to GHz count rates. Here, we present the utilization of WI-SNSPDs for discrete-variable quantum cryptography receivers with the complete photonic circuitry embedded together with the single-photon detectors on a single silicon chip, where the secret-key rates greatly benefit from the short recovery times of the detectors especially for metropolitan distances. We further realize a fully packaged 64 channel WI-SNSPD matrix for use in a wavelengthdivision multiplexed QKD setup.