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AIP Advances

Multispectral and low-filling-factor superconducting nanowire single photon detector with high absorption efficiency

Dezhi Li, Xiangyuan Liu, Rongzhen Jiao

Published Aug 1, 2020• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose a superconducting nanowire single photon detector (SNSPD) that can work efficiently at two target wavelengths and has a significant improvement in the counting rate due to the low-filling-factor nanowires in the silicon slots and the silver reflector. Numerical simulations show that the absorption efficiency can be over 90% at a single wavelength, whether the incident light wavelength is 1550 nm or 1064 nm, and over 80% when the SNSPD is designed to work at both wavelengths. In addition, the reset time is about 24% of the conventional SNSPDs. Our work presents a design for fabricating faster, larger-area, and multispectral SNSPDs with a high efficiency, which can be applied in applications such as quantum optics communication and multiwavelength sensing.

DOI
10.1063/5.0006057

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We propose a superconducting nanowire single photon detector (SNSPD) that can work efficiently at two target wavelengths and has a significant improvement in the counting rate due to the low-filling-factor nanowires in the silicon slots and the silver reflector. Numerical simulations show that the absorption efficiency can be over 90% at a single wavelength, whether the incident light wavelength is 1550 nm or 1064 nm, and over 80% when the SNSPD is designed to work at both wavelengths. In addition, the reset time is about 24% of the conventional SNSPDs. Our work presents a design for fabricating faster, larger-area, and multispectral SNSPDs with a high efficiency, which can be applied in applications such as quantum optics communication and multiwavelength sensing.
We designed a low-filling-factor and polarization-sensitive superconducting nanowire single photon detector (SNSPD), which can achieve a high absorption efficiency and counting rate simultaneously. Numerical simulations show that high absorption efficiency can be achieved by low-filling-factor SNSPDs with a silicon slot and silver reflector. The absorptance of the NbN nanowire for a transverse magnetic (TM) wave at the wavelength of 1550 nm can be 84.4% when the filling factor is only 16.5%, and the corresponding polarization extinction ratio (PER) is 562.9; the absorptance of the NbN nanowire for a transverse electric (TE) wave can be 67.0% when the filling factor is only 11.7%, and the PER is 7.4.
This Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) are efficient devices that absorb and convert incident photons to discriminable signals. However, the multi-spectral response of it is limited due to the resonance of the traditional optical cavity. In this work, we present a multi-spectral SNSPD that can detect single photon at multiple wavelengths with high efficiency simultaneously. The stack structure consists of nanowires embedded in the high refractive index dielectric strips, spacer layers and the reflection layer. The designed detector shows absorption efficiencies of over 85% at the three target wavelengths of 1550 nm, 1310 nm and 1064 nm while the filling factor of nanowire is only 20%. Meanwhile, the reset time is dramatically reduced by applying the low-filling-factor nanowire. Such ultrafast, high-performance single-photon detectors are promising for the rapidly advancing fields of multi-spectral imaging, satellite laser ranging and quantum communications.
In this work, we report multispectral superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) that can simultaneously detect single photons at multiple wavelengths with high efficiency. The superconducting nanowires are fabricated on an all-dielectric mirror consisting of two quarter-wave stack reflectors with separated central wavelengths. The unique optical structure results in serially coupled optical cavities, leading to multiple resonant absorption bands that are utilized for high-efficiency single photon detection. The fabricated detector shows system detection efficiencies of >80% at the three target wavelengths of 1550 nm, 1310 nm, and 1064 nm. The multispectral detector may eliminate the need for multiple SNSPDs for different wavelengths in a system, potentially resulting in a reduction in size, weight, and power, as well as in the cost of the overall detection system. The detector may also find interesting use for applications such as multispectral ranging or imaging.
Abstract The multispectral and polarization-sensitive detection of superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) have been identified in applications, such as quantum information processing and polarimetric imaging systems. Distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) demonstrate exceptional wavelength-selective reflectivity, and subwavelength gratings (SWGs) exhibit the ability to separate different polarized light. In this paper, a multispectral and polarization-sensitive SNSPD design is proposed by combining DBRs and SWGs. In the design, the NbN nanowires are positioned on two DBR stacks with respective central wavelengths of 1400 nm and 930 nm, followed by integration of Si-Al composite gratings onto the surface layer. Numerical simulation results show that, setting the fill factor at 0.5, the polarization sensitivity of the SNSPD is ∼0.98, with absorption efficiencies of ∼95%, ∼92%, and ∼94% at wavelengths of 1064 nm, 1310 nm, and 1550 nm, respectively. The design proposed in this work could facilitate the development of high-performance SNSPDs, potentially advancing their applications in multispectral polarization imaging and quantum communication systems.
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 develop single-photon detectors comprising single-mode fiber-coupled superconducting nanowires, with high system detection efficiencies at a wavelength of 940 nm. The detector comprises a 6.5-nm-thick, 110-nm-wide NbN nanowire meander fabricated onto a Si substrate with a distributed Bragg reflector for enhancing the optical absorptance. We demonstrate that, via the design of a low filling factor (1/3) and active area (Φ = 10 μm), the system reaches a detection efficiency of ∼60% with a dark count rate of 10 Hz, a recovery time <12 ns, and a timing jitter of ∼50 ps.