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OSA Advanced Photonics Congress

Optimization of Plasmonic Structure Integrated Single-photon Detector Designs to Enhance Absorptance

Mária Csete, Gábor Szekeres, Balázs Bánhelyi, András Szenes, Tibor Csendes, Gábor Szabó

Published Jan 1, 2015• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Plasmonic structure integrated superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) configurations were optimized for 1550 nm p-polarized light illumination to maximize absorptance. Orientation dependent NbN absorptance, spectral sensitivity and dispersion characteristics were investigated to find optimal configurations.
DOI
10.1364/iprsn.2015.jm3a.30

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This study proposed what we believe to be a novel method for fabricating superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) with high efficiency, polarization insensitivity, and ultrafast response. To achieve these properties in niobium nitride (NbN) SNSPDs, the periodic four-split rings (PFSR) were positioned above the nanowires. This design uses the localized surface plasmon resonance to enhance the electric field around nanowires. For an incident light with a wavelength of 1550 nm, the PFSR-SNSPD structure achieved a polarization extinction ratio of 1.0064 and absorptions of 88.94% and 88.37% under TE and TM polarizations, respectively. The nanowire length was reduced by 85% using a meandering nanowire arrangement with a fill factor of 0.074.
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Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) deliver superior performance over their competitors in the near-infrared regime. However, these detectors have an intrinsic polarization dependence on the incident wave because of their one-dimensional meander structure. In this paper, we propose an approach to eliminate the polarization sensitivity of SNSPDs by using near-field optics to increase the absorption of SNSPDs under transverse magnetic (TM) illumination. In addition, an optical cavity is added to our SNSPD to obtain nearly perfect absorption of the incident wave. Numerical simulations show that the maximum absorption of a designed SNSPD can reach 96% at 1550 nm, and indicate that the absorption difference between transverse electric (TE) and TM polarization is less than 0.5% across a wavelength window of 300 nm. Our work provides the first demonstration of the possibility of designing a polarization-insensitive and highly efficient SNSPD without performing device symmetry improvements.