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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics

High-efficiency UV Superconducting Nanowire Single-photon Detectors from Amorphous MoSi

Emma E. Wollman, Varun Boehm Verma, Ryan M. Briggs, Andrew D. Beyer, Richard P. Mirin, Sae Woo Nam, Francesco Marsili, Matthew D. Shaw

Published Jan 1, 2016• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate high-efficiency detection of 370 nm photons using superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors. The detectors employ amorphous MoSi (bulk Tc = 6.8 K) to enable operation on a compact cryocooler system.
DOI
10.1364/cleo_qels.2016.fw4c.4

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Recent progress in the development of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) made of amorphous materials has delivered excellent performances and has had a great impact on a range of research fields. Despite showing the highest system detection efficiency (SDE) ever reported with SNSPDs, amorphous materials typically lead to lower critical currents, which have impacts on their jitter performance. Combining a very low jitter and a high SDE remains a challenge. Here, we report on highly efficient superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors based on amorphous MoSi, combining system jitters as low as 26 ps and a SDE of 80% at 1550 nm. We also report detailed observations on the jitter behaviour, which hints at intrinsic limitations and leads to practical implications for SNSPD performance.
Recent progress in the development of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) made of amorphous material has delivered excellent performances, and has had a great impact on a range of research fields. Despite showing the highest system detection efficiency (SDE) ever reported with SNSPDs, amorphous materials typically lead to lower critical currents, which impacts on their jitter performance. Combining a very low jitter and a high SDE remains a challenge. Here, we report on highly efficient superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors based on amorphous MoSi, combining system jitters as low as 26 ps and a SDE of 80% at 1550 nm. We also report detailed observations on the jitter behaviour, which hints at intrinsic limitations and leads to practical implications for SNSPD performance.
Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPD) made from amorphous superconductors have showed great promise for achieving high fabrication yields, due to the highly uniform nature of the films. We present progress on the development of SNSPD based on amorphous MoSi with a critical temperature of around 5 K, which is ideal for detector operation at temperatures of 1 – 2.5 K, accessible with widely available cryogenic systems. First generation devices have achieved a saturated internal efficiency from visible to near-infrared wavelengths, which is the first requirement for high overall system efficiency. The broadband response has allowed us to make a robust study the energy-current relation in these devices, which defines the current required for a saturated internal detection efficiency for a given incident photon energy. Contrary to previous studies with other material systems, we find a nonlinear energy-current relation, which is an important insight into the detection mechanism in SNSPDs. The latest generation devices have been embedded into an micro-cavity structure in order to increase the system detection efficiency, which has increased to over 65% at 1550 nm. The efficiency is believed to be limited by fabrication imperfections and we present ongoing progress towards improving this characteristic as well as the yield of the devices. Efforts are also being made towards increasing the maximum operating temperature of the devices.
We report on MoSi SNSPDs which achieved high system detection efficiency (87.1 ± 0.5% at 1542 nm) at 0.7 K and we demonstrate that these detectors can also be operated with saturated internal efficiency at a temperature of 2.3 K in a Gifford-McMahon cryocooler. We measured a minimum system jitter of 76 ps, maximum count rate approaching 10 MHz, and polarization dependence as low as 3.3 ± 0.1%. The performance of MoSi SNSPDs at 2.3 K is similar to the performance of WSi SNSPDs at < 1 K. The higher operating temperature of MoSi SNSPDs makes these devices promising for widespread use due to the simpler and less expensive cryogenics required for their operation.
Future applications in integrated quantum photonics will require large numbers of efficient, fast, and low-noise single-photon counters. Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors made from amorphous material systems are best suited to meet these demands, but the integration with nanophotonic circuits has remained a challenge. Here, we show how amorphous molybdenum silicide (MoSi) nanowires are integrated with nanophotonic silicon nitride waveguides in traveling wave geometry. We found a saturated on-chip detection efficiency of (73 ± 10) % for telecom wavelength photons and the sub-10 Hz dark count rate at a temperature of 2.1 K, which allows for operation in robust, compact, and economic cryogenic systems. Applications requiring fast counting will benefit from the sub-5 ns recovery times of our devices that we combine with 135 ps timing accuracy. Achieving this performance with waveguide-integrated amorphous superconductors is an important step toward enabling high yield fabrication of competitive single-photon detectors on a large variety of nanophotonic material systems.