Low-Noise PPLN-based Single-Photon Detector | NIST

Matthew D. Eisaman, Jingyun Fan, Alan L. Migdall +1 more

Martin J. Stevens, Burm Baek, Richard P. Mirin +2 more

Xu Hai, Lijun Ma, Oliver Slattery +1 more

This paper describes the detection of single photons, which have been transmitted through standard fiber at the telecom wavelength of 1310 nm. Following transmission, the 1310-nm photon is up-converted to 710 nm in a periodical-poled LiNbO3 (PPLN) waveguide and then detected by a silicon-based avalanche photodiode (Si-APD). The overall detection efficiency of the detector is 20%. We have also characterized the sensitivity of the PPLN's efficiency to temperature and wavelength changes. We focused on the noise property of the up-conversion detector. Without classical channel co-propagation, the dark count rate is 2.2 kHz, which is lower than current up-conversion detectors by more than one order of magnitude. The up-conversion detector is then applied to a QKD system, which is characterized and is shown to have a very strong performance.

Sae Woo Nam

Lijun Ma, Oliver Slattery, Alan Mink +1 more

We developed low-noise up-conversion single photon detectors for 1310 nm based on a periodically-poled LiNbO3 (PPLN) waveguide. The low-noise feature is achieved by using a pulsed optical pump at a wavelength longer than the signal wavelength. The detectors were used in a quantum key distribution (QKD) systems based on polarization encoding, measurement for entangled photon pairs and spectrum measurement at single photon levels. In this paper, the overall detection efficiency and noise level of the detectors are characterized and the polarization and wavelength sensitivity of the detection efficiency is analyzed. The applications of this detector in quantum information systems are also described.

Guo-Liang Shentu, Jason S. Pelc, Xiao-Dong Wang +3 more

We demonstrate upconversion single-photon detection for the 1550-nm band using a PPLN waveguide, long-wavelength pump, and narrowband filtering. We achieve total-system detection efficiency of 30% with noise at the dark-count level of a silicon APD.