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IEEE photonics journal

Sixteen-Pixel NbN Nanowire Single Photon Detector Coupled With 300-μm Fiber

Qi Henry Chen, Biao Zhang, Labao Zhang, Rui Ge, Ruiying Xu, Yang Wu, Xuecou Tu, Xiaoqing Jia, Danfeng Pan, Lin Kang, Jian Chen, Peiheng Wu

Published Nov 21, 2019• 12 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Niobium nitride (NbN) nanowires have a high repetition rate and efficiency, making them ideal for superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs). However, it is difficult to fabricate NbN arrays over large areas, which is critical for various applications. This paper describes a 4 × 4 NbN SNSPD array (16 pixels) and optical coupling with a 300-μm-diameter multimode fiber using beam compression technology. This is the first NbN SNSPD coupled with such large-diameter fibers. The designed pixels are positioned as closely as possible (pixel filling factor about 98.5%), almost without dead area between them. This results in a system efficiency of 46% and a quantum efficiency of 94.5% for photons (λ = 1064 nm) coupled from multimode fibers. An intrinsic time resolution of less than 69 ps can be obtained. The proposed high-performance single photon detector is suitable for satellite laser ranging. Furthermore, the proposed system is feasible for large SNSPD arrays with NbN, paving the way for the development of efficient photon cameras with NbN nanowires.

DOI
10.1109/jphot.2019.2954938

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Niobium nitride (NbN) nanowires have a high repetition rate and efficiency, making them ideal for superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs). However, it is difficult to fabricate NbN arrays over large areas, which is critical for various applications. This paper describes a 4 × 4 NbN SNSPD array (16 pixels) and optical coupling with a 300-μm-diameter multimode fiber using beam compression technology. This is the first NbN SNSPD coupled with such large-diameter fibers. The designed pixels are positioned as closely as possible (pixel filling factor about 98.5%), almost without dead area between them. This results in a system efficiency of 46% and a quantum efficiency of 94.5% for photons (λ = 1064 nm) coupled from multimode fibers. An intrinsic time resolution of less than 69 ps can be obtained. The proposed high-performance single photon detector is suitable for satellite laser ranging. Furthermore, the proposed system is feasible for large SNSPD arrays with NbN, paving the way for the development of efficient photon cameras with NbN nanowires.
Niobium Nitride (NbN) nanowire is the most popular detection material of superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) for high repetition rate and high efficiency. However, it has been assumed to be difficult for fabricating SNSPDs with arrays over large area, which are critical components of quantum imaging, linear optical quantum computing, satellite laser ranging, and high-speed quantum key distribution. This paper reported a 4*4 pixel NbN SNSPDs array with an equivalent receiving aperture of 300 micrometer associated with beam compression technology, which is the first NbN SNSPD coupled by 300 micrometer fiber according to our knowledge. The designed pixel was compact with a filling factor of 98.5%, resulting in a high quantum efficiency of 94.5%, a system efficiency of 46% for photons coupled from 300 micrometer fiber without optimizing polarization, and a system time resolution of 92 ps. This work demonstrates the feasibility of a large SNSPDs array, and paves the way for developing efficient photon camera with NbN nanowires.
Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) with both an ultra-large-active area and a high count rate (CR) are challenging from the design and fabrication. Here, we develop a NbN SNSPD with a circular active area of 300 μm-in-diameter and use multiple approaches to boost the maximal count rate (MCR). This large-active-area SNSPD is divided into nine pixels (parts). Each pixel consists of serially connected two superconducting nanowire avalanche photodetectors (SC-2SNAP), which yielded a four-fold reduction in the kinetic inductance of a single pixel. To further increase MCR, an optimized series resistance of about 380 Ω is added to each pixel, reducing the full recovery time of each pixel from a few microseconds to approximately 90 ns. All nine pixels show uniform superconducting critical temperatures of ∼7.4 K and switching currents in the range of 15.3–16.7 μA. When the detector coupled to a single-mode fiber and illuminated with 1064-nm photons, the single-pixel exhibits a well-saturated system detection efficiency (SDE) of 67% at a dark CR of 30 Hz, and its CR exceeds 10 MHz with an SDE of 50%. When coupled to a 200-μm multi-mode fiber, the total SDE of nine pixels is approximately 42% and the total MCR exceeds 43 MHz.
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.
Single-photon detectors with high detection rates are the foundation for the high-speed remote laser communication. Although a total detection rate of gigahertz has been achieved with multiple superconducting nanowires, the coupled single-mode fibers are incompatible with most large-aperture optical telescopes, and the uneven response distribution between nanowires also limits the system performance in practice. Here, we report a multimode fiber coupled superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) with a gigahertz detection rate through 16 intertwined niobium nitride nanowires operated at 2.4 K. The SNSPD is coupled with a 62.5 μm multimode fiber through beam compression. Overcoming the interference of speckles in multimode fibers, all nanowires perform highly uniform with narrow distributions of detection efficiencies (5.48% ± 0.136%), achieving a total detection efficiency of 87.6% and a total system detection efficiency of 52.3%, a maximum detection rate of 1.3 Gcps when the efficiency drops by 3 dB, and a highest detection rate of 3.1 Gcps before latching occurs. The significance of the uniform performance of pixels in terms of system speed is verified by modeling the combined detection rate vs the detection efficiency distribution, which is crucial in high-speed laser communication.
We report a compact, scalable, and high-performance superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) array by using a multichannel optical fiber array-coupled configuration. For single pixels with an active area of 18 µm in diameter and illuminated at the telecom wavelength of 1550 nm, we achieved a pixel yield of 13/16 on one chip, an average system detection efficiency of 69% at a dark count rate of 160 cps, a minimum timing jitter of 74 ps, and a maximum count rate of ∼ 40 M c p s . The optical crosstalk coefficient between adjacent channels is better than − 60 d B . The performance of the fiber array-coupled detectors is comparable with a standalone detector coupled to a single fiber. Our method is promising for the development of scalable, high-performance, and high-yield SNSPDs.
Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) play a pivotal role in infrared single-photon-detection applications owing to their free-running mode, near-unity detection efficiency, and excellent time resolution. However, conventional niobium nitride- (NbN) SNSPDs often have a trade-off between optimal detection efficiency and time resolution. We herein demonstrate NbN SNSPDs in the combination of high efficiency and time resolution by using the helium-ion-irradiated film of 10 nm and a homemade cryogenic amplifier to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. The proposed 18-μm-diameter device operated at 850 mK shows a saturated system detection efficiency of ∼90.5% at 1550 nm wavelength with a dark count rate below 50 counts per second (cps), and minimum system timing jitter of ∼14.7 ps. Meanwhile, the recovery time is 21.2 ns owing to its lower kinetic inductance. The time-of-flight light detection and ranging with this device was further carried out indoors, which demonstrates a submillimeter (<0.5 mm) depth resolution, as well as good depth and intensity reconstruction of a low-signature object even under the dwell time of 0.5 ms. It indicates that our device has a great advantage and potential in high-time-resolution and weak-signal-detection applications, such as real-time imaging, fluorescence lifetime detection, and remote laser sensing.