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IEEE photonics journal

Design of a Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detector With Dual-Broadband and High Detection Efficiency

Fan Zheng, Ruiying Xu, Yajun Chen, Guanghao Zhu, Biaobing Jin, Lin Kang, Weiwei Xu, Jian Chen, Peiheng Wu

Published Jul 26, 2017• 10 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a structure of a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) with a composite cavity. Compared with the SNSPD in previous studies, our device exhibits a property of high efficiency and dual broadband. Based on the transmission line theory, the structure is abstractedly expressed as an equivalent circuit model and a design method is presented. Taking λ = 1310nm and λ = 1550nm as an example, the structural parameters are calculated and verified by commercial software FDTD Solutions. The simulation results show that peaks of the absorption curve appear at both wavelengths and peak values are all larger than 97.5%. The influence of the upper half cavity on the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the absorption peak is discussed. Our works provide a reference for designing an SNSPD with different FWHM.

DOI
10.1109/jphot.2017.2731985

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In this paper, we propose a structure of a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) with a composite cavity. Compared with the SNSPD in previous studies, our device exhibits a property of high efficiency and dual broadband. Based on the transmission line theory, the structure is abstractedly expressed as an equivalent circuit model and a design method is presented. Taking λ = 1310nm and λ = 1550nm as an example, the structural parameters are calculated and verified by commercial software FDTD Solutions. The simulation results show that peaks of the absorption curve appear at both wavelengths and peak values are all larger than 97.5%. The influence of the upper half cavity on the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the absorption peak is discussed. Our works provide a reference for designing an SNSPD with different FWHM.
Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) with a composite optical structure composed of phase-grating and optical cavity structures are designed to enhance system detection efficiency and count rates. Numerical simulation by finite-difference time-domain method shows that the photon absorption capacity of SNSPDs with a composite optical structure can be enhanced significantly by adjusting the parameters of the phase-grating and optical cavity structures. The absorption capacity of the superconducting nanowires reached 69.8% at the wavelength of 850 nm with 0.3 filling factor. When the filling factor was reduced to only 0.08, the absorption capacity is still 48.52%. It greatly decreased the kinetic inductance of SNSPDs, and improved the count rates.
We report on the enhancement of system detection efficiency in a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) by applying the optical cavity structure. The nanowire was made using 4-nm-thick NbN thin films and covered with an SiO cavity and Au mirror designed for 1300-1600nm wavelengths. The device is mounted into fiber-coupled packages, and installed in a practical multichannel system based on GM cryocoolers. System detection efficiency depends on the absorptance of cavity structure, and reached 28% and 40% at 1550nm and 1310nm wavelengths, respectively. These values were considerably higher than an SNSPD without optical cavity.
Abstract In this paper several designs to maximize the absorption efficiency of superconducting-nanowire single-photon detectors are investigated. Using a simple optical cavity consisting of a gold mirror and a SiO 2 layer, the absorption efficiency can be boosted to over 97%: this result is confirmed experimentally by the realization of an NbTiN-based detector having an overall system detection efficiency of 85% at 1.31 μ m. Calculations show that by sandwiching the nanowire between two dielectric Bragg reflectors, unity absorption (>99.9%) could be reached at the peak wavelength for optimized structures. To achieve broadband high efficiency, a different approach is considered: a waveguide-coupled detector. The calculations performed in this work show that, by correctly dimensioning the waveguide and the nanowire, polarization-insensitive detectors absorbing more than 95% of the injected photons over a wavelength range of several hundred nm can be designed. We propose a detector design making use of GaN/AlN waveguides, since these materials allow lattice-matched epitaxial deposition of Nb(Ti)N films and are transparent on a very wide wavelength range.
Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors with an optical resonant cavity structure are fabricated directly on the single crystal substrate. In order to enhance the photons absorption of incident light and improve system detection efficiency (SDE) efficiently, the structure of SNSPD was designed and optimized using the finite-difference time-domain analysis for different kinds of substrates. The NbN-SNSPDs fabricated on different substrates are measured and compared. The SDE of NbN-SNSPD on MgO substrate reaches 66 % at the wavelength of 940nm at a dark count rate of 100 cps by illuminating from the back of the device through single mode optical fiber.
We have developed a practical superconducting nanowire single photon detector (SNSPD) system with our superconducting thin films and devices fabrication, optical coupling packaging, and cryogenic technology. The SNSPD devices were fabricated from high-quality niobium nitride (NbN) ultra-thin films that were epitaxially grown on single-crystal MgO substrates, and optical cavity structure were applied for improvement of photo absorption efficiency. The SNSPD system was developed based on a compact Gifford-McMahon (GM) cryocooler, in which SNSPD can operate continuously at temperature of 2.9 K +/- 10 mK with low power consumption without any liquid cryogens. The system detection efficiencies at 1550 nm wavelength (at a 100 Hz dark count rate) were found to be 2.6% for device without optical cavity and 21% for device with optical cavity. The response speed of devices showed maximally 200 MHz with 5 × 5 mm square device, and timing jitter of 100 ps full width at a half maximum (FWHM) was observed.