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Applied Physics Letters

Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors based on disordered NbRe films

C. Cirillo, Jin Chang, M. Caputo, Johannes W. N. Los, Sander N. Dorenbos, Iman Esmaeil Zadeh, C. Attanasio

Published Oct 26, 2020• 32 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Superconducting Nanowire Single Photon Detectors (SNSPDs) based on Nb0.15Re0.85 disordered nanowires are developed. The devices have a meander structure of wires 50–100 nm wide and cover a circular detection area with a diameter of about 10–16 μm. The main figures of merit of the detectors are extracted from a flood illumination process at 2.8 K, featuring a saturated internal efficiency up to λ= 1301 nm, recovery times between about 8 and 19 ns, and a jitter of about 35 ps. These results confirm that Nb0.15Re0.85 is a promising candidate for the realization of fast SNSPDs, as recently suggested.

DOI
10.1063/5.0021487

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Superconducting Nanowire Single Photon Detectors (SNSPDs) based on Nb0.15Re0.85 disordered nanowires are developed. The devices have a meander structure of wires 50–100 nm wide and cover a circular detection area with a diameter of about 10–16 μm. The main figures of merit of the detectors are extracted from a flood illumination process at 2.8 K, featuring a saturated internal efficiency up to λ= 1301 nm, recovery times between about 8 and 19 ns, and a jitter of about 35 ps. These results confirm that Nb0.15Re0.85 is a promising candidate for the realization of fast SNSPDs, as recently suggested.
Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) have demonstrated advantages over traditional detectors in many fields [1]. Most fiber-coupled SNSPDs are coupled to single mode fibers, limiting their usability for applications where large surface area detectors are needed, for example fluorescence detection and satellite-based quantum communication [2][3]. Other important requirements for many applications are broadband detection efficiency, and low timing jitter [4]. So far, the increased meander length of multimode detectors, and the therefore increased kinetic inductance and number of imperfections due to film inhomogeneities have limited the timing jitter [5]. Moreover, combining low timing jitter with high detection efficiency and low dark count rate in one device is challenging due to the tradeoffs between different properties of SNSPDs [6]. In this paper, we achieved high efficiency and strong saturation over a broad wavelength range with a low timing jitter of 16.99 ps while maintaining a low dark count rate of < 0.2 Hz for an SNSPD coupled to a 50 µm core multimode fiber. To enhance the broadband absorption from 405 nm to 830 nm, detectors were fabricated on an optimized SiO2 cavity and Aluminum mirror. The geometry of the nanowire was also tuned to reach a good internal saturation of efficiency over the visible/NIR range but also to carry high current to get a large signal. Furthermore, a cryogenic readout amplifier was optimized to improve the signal to noise ratio and thus lead to high time resolution. Our devices can be readily used to enable higher resolution and faster quantum optics, bio-imaging, laser ranging and other optical experiments.
Abstract We experimentally investigated the detection performance of highly disordered Nb x Ti 1 − x N based superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs). The dependence on the composition of the transition temperature T c for Nb x Ti 1 − x N films show a dome-like behavior on the Nb content, with a maximal T c at x Nb ∼ 0.65 , and the Nb 0.65 Ti 0.35 N films also combine relatively large sheet resistance and intermediate residual resistivity ratio. Moreover, 60-nm-wide and 7-nm-thick Nb 0.65 Ti 0.35 N nanowires show a switching current as high as 14.5 μ A, and saturated intrinsic detection efficiency with a plateau of more than 2 μ A at 2.4 K. Finally, the corresponding SNSPDs on an alternative SiO 2 /Ta 2 O 5 dielectric mirror showed a system detection efficiency of approximately 92% for 1550 nm photons, and the timing jitter is around 26 ps. Our results demonstrate that the highly disordered Nb x Ti 1 − x N
The intrinsic detection performance of superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) is highly dependent on the superconducting properties of underlying thin films. This report outlines the enhancement of detection performance for single telecom wavelength photons in disordered NbTiN SNSPD at 4.2 K. By increasing the nitrogen content and deposition pressure, the NbTiN films show suppression in critical temperature and an increase in sheet resistance. Notably, the resulting SNSPDs display a broader saturation plateau at 2.2 K, leading to superior detection performance at 4.2 K. With the disordered 7-nm-thick NbTiN films, we fabricated SNSPDs with system detection efficiency up to 83% for 1550 nm photons at 4.2 K. Moreover, these devices also show saturated intrinsic detection efficiency for 2000 nm photons. With the features outlined, the devices can be integrated into the idle 4.2 K stage of the dilution refrigerator for applications in optical quantum information processing or utilize for detecting laser radar signals in airborne platforms.
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.
Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) have been realized using an innovative parallel wire configuration. This configuration allows, at the same time, a large detection area and a fast response, with the additional advantage of large signal amplitudes. The detectors have been thoroughly characterized in terms of signal properties (amplitude, risetime and falltime), detector operation (latching and not latching) and quantum efficiency (at 850 nm). It has been shown that the parallel SNSPD is able to provide significantly higher maximum count rates for large area SNSPDs than meandered SNSPDs. Through a proper parallel wire configuration the increase in maximum count rate can be obtained without latching problems.
Nitrogen-doped Tungsten-Rhenium superconducting alloys were recently proposed as a promising material platform for superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs), offering a favorable balance between high normal state resistivity and tunable superconducting properties. In this work, we report on the fabrication and characterization of SNSPDs based on thin W0.75Re0.25 films deposited by reactive DC magnetron sputtering in a mixed Ar/N2 atmosphere. Meander detectors with 70 nm linewidth exhibit saturated internal detection efficiency (IDE) up to 1310 nm and 85.3% IDE at 1550 nm at 2.5 K, with sub-nanosecond rise times, decay times of the order of a few nanoseconds, and timing jitter of 73.2 ps measured with room temperature amplifiers.