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IEEE photonics journal

Multimode Fiber Coupled Superconductor Nanowire Single-Photon Detector

Labao Zhang, Ming Gu, Tao Jia, Ruiyin Xu, Chao Wan, Lin Kang, Jian Chen, Peiheng Wu

Published Sep 25, 2014• 16 citations
Publisher

Abstract

High-performance superconductor nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) coupled by 50-μm multimode fiber were designed and fabricated for the purpose of space applications. Microlens coupling between multimode fiber and detector chip was proposed, resulting in coupling efficiency of 86% at the chips with detection area of 15 x 15 μm2. An optical structure for enhancing the photons absorption and superconductor nanowires with low critical current of 3 μA were fabricated on the chips. A cryogenic amplifier was adopted to increase the signal-to-noise ratio and time jitter of output pulse. The SNSPD exhibited system efficiency (1550 nm) of 56% at a dark count rate of 100 cps, 50% at a dark count rate of 5 cps, and 40% at a dark count rate of 1 cps. The time jitter was 46 ps at full-width at half-maximum. The multimode fiber coupling system with high performance will promote its applications in free space.

DOI
10.1109/jphot.2014.2360285

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IEEE photonics journal•Aug 26, 2019•10 citations
High-performance superconductor nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) coupled by 50-μm multimode fiber were designed and fabricated for the purpose of space applications. Microlens coupling between multimode fiber and detector chip was proposed, resulting in coupling efficiency of 86% at the chips with detection area of 15 x 15 μm2. An optical structure for enhancing the photons absorption and superconductor nanowires with low critical current of 3 μA were fabricated on the chips. A cryogenic amplifier was adopted to increase the signal-to-noise ratio and time jitter of output pulse. The SNSPD exhibited system efficiency (1550 nm) of 56% at a dark count rate of 100 cps, 50% at a dark count rate of 5 cps, and 40% at a dark count rate of 1 cps. The time jitter was 46 ps at full-width at half-maximum. The multimode fiber coupling system with high performance will promote its applications in free space.
Multimode fiber (MMF)-coupled superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) are critical for free-space quantum communication and sensing, yet their performance is severely limited by polarization-dependent detection efficiency and high dark count rate (DCR) arising from thermal photons. Here, we present a transformative solution that addresses both challenges simultaneously. We demonstrate a polarization-insensitive SNSPD based on a dielectric-compensated bilayer nanowire structure, achieving a system detection efficiency (SDE) of 88% at 1.5 μm with a DCR of ∼4.8×10 4 cps for MMF-coupled signals. To mitigate the elevated thermal noise inherent to multimode coupling, we integrate a compact, dual-stage on-fiber filter with a suppression ratio exceeding 60 dB. The packaged device delivers an SDE of 81% with a DCR of only 4 cps, corresponding to an over 11,000-fold SNR enhancement relative to the unfiltered MMF-coupled configuration.
Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) have demonstrated advantages over traditional detectors in many fields [1]. Most fiber-coupled SNSPDs are coupled to single mode fibers, limiting their usability for applications where large surface area detectors are needed, for example fluorescence detection and satellite-based quantum communication [2][3]. Other important requirements for many applications are broadband detection efficiency, and low timing jitter [4]. So far, the increased meander length of multimode detectors, and the therefore increased kinetic inductance and number of imperfections due to film inhomogeneities have limited the timing jitter [5]. Moreover, combining low timing jitter with high detection efficiency and low dark count rate in one device is challenging due to the tradeoffs between different properties of SNSPDs [6]. In this paper, we achieved high efficiency and strong saturation over a broad wavelength range with a low timing jitter of 16.99 ps while maintaining a low dark count rate of < 0.2 Hz for an SNSPD coupled to a 50 µm core multimode fiber. To enhance the broadband absorption from 405 nm to 830 nm, detectors were fabricated on an optimized SiO2 cavity and Aluminum mirror. The geometry of the nanowire was also tuned to reach a good internal saturation of efficiency over the visible/NIR range but also to carry high current to get a large signal. Furthermore, a cryogenic readout amplifier was optimized to improve the signal to noise ratio and thus lead to high time resolution. Our devices can be readily used to enable higher resolution and faster quantum optics, bio-imaging, laser ranging and other optical experiments.
We report the development of the multimode fiber-coupled superconducting nanowire single-photon detector with high system detection efficiency at visible wavelength. The detector consists of a 10.5-nm-thick and 150-nm-wide NbN nanowire meander fabricated on a Si substrate with a multilayer dielectric mirror and a quarter wavelength cavity for obtaining high optical absorptance. The meander area was 35 µm in diameter and coupled with the GRIN-lensed multimode optical fiber with a core diameter of 50 µm. The system reached detection efficiency of 70% with dark count rate of 100 Hz at the wavelength of 635 nm, 3 dB roll-off response counting rate of 8.5 Mcps, and timing jitter of 76 ps.
Satellite-ground quantum communication requires single-photon detectors of 850-nm wavelength with both high detection efficiency and large sensitive area. We developed superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) on one-dimensional photonic crystals, which acted as optical cavities to enhance the optical absorption, with a sensitive-area diameter of 50 μm. The fabricated multimode fiber coupled NbN SNSPDs exhibited a maximum system detection efficiency (DE) of up to 82% and a DE of 78% at a dark count rate of 100 Hz at 850-nm wavelength as well as a system jitter of 105 ps.
We present an 8 × 8 superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) array that addresses the trade-off between detection efficiency and count rates in large-area devices.The SNSPD array employs a distributed nanowire architecture and a polarization-insensitive optical cavity, when coupled with a 105-μm multimode fiber, achieves a system detection efficiency of 75% at 1064 nm with a count rate of 945 MHz at 3 dB compression and an average timing jitter of <100 ps.This design offers a scalable solution for high-speed photon counting with large-area detection and multimode compatibility.
Large active-area superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) coupled with multimode fibers (MMFs) can provide high light-gathering capacity, which is essential for free-space detection applications in photon-starved regimes. However, MMF-coupled SNSPDs often suffer from large system dark count rates (DCRsys) over kHz due to blackbody radiation of the MMF at room temperature. Such large DCRsys would significantly degrade signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the receiving system. This paper reports an MMF-coupled large-active-area SNSPD system with low DCRsys by using a homemade cryogenic MMF filter bench. The filter bench, which consists of lenses and optical filters, can provide a high transmittance of about 80% at the central wavelength of the passband (1550 ± 12.5 nm) and a wide blocking range from 500 nm to over 6000 nm at 40 K. With using the filter bench, the DCRsys of an MMF-coupled 9-pixel SNSPD array with an active area of 50 μm in diameter is greatly suppressed by 23 dB with 1 dB loss of system detection efficiency (SDE). The detector demonstrates an SDE of 51% at a DCRsys of 100 Hz for 1550 nm photons. Thus, SNR of the detector is enhanced by about 160 times and the noise equivalent power is improved to 3×10-19W/Hz1/2.