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IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

Titanium/Silver Transition-Edge Sensors for Photon-Number-Resolving Measurement

Hong-Fan Zhang, Pei-Sa Ma, Xingxiang Zhou

Published Feb 7, 2024• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

In order to improve the performance of photon-number-resolving (PNR) superconducting transition-edge sensor (TES) devices, it is advantageous to use device materials with excellent thermal properties. We present TES devices based on a titanium/silver (Ti/Ag) bi-layer structure which is expected to enable high-performance devices due to the high thermal conductivity and low specific heat of silver. We describe the fabrication process for our Ti/Ag devices and report their characterization results. We use the fabricated devices with critical temperature of about 190 milli-Kelvin for PNR experiments at 1550 nm and shorter wave lengths, and demonstrate high energy resolution of 0.17 eV and fast thermal recovery time of about 700 ns at the bias point of the best energy resolution. Judicious characterization of the device performance under various working conditions verifies its reliability and robustness and proves that the Ti/Ag TES can support high-performance PNR measurement in demanding quantum optics experiments.

DOI
10.1109/tasc.2024.3363129

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In order to improve the performance of photon-number-resolving (PNR) superconducting transition-edge sensor (TES) devices, it is advantageous to use device materials with excellent thermal properties. We present TES devices based on a titanium/silver (Ti/Ag) bi-layer structure which is expected to enable high-performance devices due to the high thermal conductivity and low specific heat of silver. We describe the fabrication process for our Ti/Ag devices and report their characterization results. We use the fabricated devices with critical temperature of about 190 milli-Kelvin for PNR experiments at 1550 nm and shorter wave lengths, and demonstrate high energy resolution of 0.17 eV and fast thermal recovery time of about 700 ns at the bias point of the best energy resolution. Judicious characterization of the device performance under various working conditions verifies its reliability and robustness and proves that the Ti/Ag TES can support high-performance PNR measurement in demanding quantum optics experiments.
A transition edge sensor (TES) is one of superconducting photon detectors, which has a photon number resolving ability in light pulses. The TES device is a kind of calorimeters operated at an extremely low temperature, and the energy of the photons is measured as a resistance change in a superconducting transition region of the TES. The advantages of the TESs are an excellent energy resolution and a high quantum efficiency. However a response speed is limited due to slow thermal recovery time. To overcome this, we fabricated new TES devices which are based on a titanium superconductor. The critical temperature of our titanium films is around 410 mK, which greatly improves the thermal recovery time. The observed decay time constant of response signals to the light pulses is around several hundreds of ns, that make it possible to operate the devices at a counting rate over 1 MHz. The photon number resolving power is 0.35 eV(FWHM) for a 5 μm size device even at the high operating temperature. The system quantum efficiency is 65 % by embedding the TES films in an optical structure with a high reflection dielectric mirror and an anti-reflection coatings fabricated by an ion beam assisted sputtering method. These features are very promising for high speed photon number resolving applications in the quantum information field.
Superconducting transition-edge sensors (TESs), working as single-photon detectors with high quantum efficiency, low dark count rate, and photon number resolving capability, have been successfully used in quantum information experiments as well as astronomical transient object observations. Aiming to achieve high count rate, we are developing titanium-based superconducting TES single-photon detectors with a critical temperature of ~300 mK. Ti-based TESs with active area from 10 × 10 μm to 40 × 40 μm are first fabricated on silicon substrate coated with SiOx. The fabricated TES devices show a thermal conductance scaling with the active area and an effective time constant of ~4 μs from pulsed laser diode illumination. In order to get high quantum efficiency, we further design and fabricate a 1550-nm optical cavity based on dielectric mirror and antireflection layer, and study its absorption with an IR spectrometer. Ti TES devices on the dielectric mirror are then fabricated and the superconducting transition is measured.
High performance optical photon detectors are indispensable for quantum communications. Superconducting detectors are very attractive because of their high quantum efficiency and intrinsic low dark count probability. We have been developing high performance optical photon detectors with a Titanium‐based transition edge sensor (Ti‐TES), which have superconducting critical temperatures around 300 mK. The relatively high transition temperature enables rapid thermal relaxation of the absorbed photon energy, resulting in excellent temporal characteristics such as fast response time below 1 μs, low timing jitter of 33 ns, and maximum counting rate over 1 MHz. Although there is a tradeoff relationship between the temporal response and energy resolution, we have simultaneously achieved high quantum efficiency and high energy resolution. We fabricated Ti‐TES devices with an optical cavity structure for photon absorption enhancement in the superconducting film. The measured quantum efficiency is over 95 % at 850 nm wavelength, and the energy resolution is 0.28 and 0.6 eV FWHM for the 5 μm and 10 μm square size devices, respectively, which is sufficient to resolve the photon number of the 850 nm light pulses. These high performance detectors are expected to be one of the powerful components in quantum information, communication and measurement technologies. We will also report and discuss the application of the Ti‐TES photon detectors to quantum communication systems.
Recently, photon number resolving detectors, which are based on micro-calorimeters with superconducting transition edge sensors (TESs) [1], have shown excellent performances such as high quantum efficiency of 89 %, and high energy resolution of 0.2 eV [2]. To extend their applications to quantum telecommunication fields, however, the detectors should have high timing properties of the low timing jitters and the fast recovering time. To achieve these properties, we have developed new TES detectors with a titanium-based superconductor. Titanium has the transition temperature (Tc) at 0.39 K in bulk. This will improve the timing properties of TES devices because the operating temperature at Tc is strongly related to the intrinsic time constant of the device and the thermal diffusions of the incident photon energy.
Transition-edge sensors (TESs) have shown the capability of both energy resolution and resolving photon numbers. In this work, we present the fabrication and characterization of high detection efficiency Ti optical TESs with the critical temperatureTc= 213 mK and the photon-number resolving capability at telecommunication wavelength 1550 nm. The Ti superconducting film is prepared by a DC magnetron sputtering technique. An optical cavity comprised of 5-layers antireflection and 15-layers high-reflection Ta2O5/SiO2is enclosed with the Ti film by an ion beam assisted deposition method to improve detection efficiency, which brings the absorption of 99.74%. The energy resolution for the Ti TES with sensitive area 20 μm × 20 μm is 0.45 eV and the detection efficiency is 97% ± 1%.
Transition Edge Sensors (TESs) are characterized by the intrinsic figures of merit to resolve both the energy and the statistical distribution of the incident photons. These properties lead TES devices to become the best single photon detectors for quantum technology experiments. For a TES based on titanium and gold, has been reached, at telecommunication wavelength, an unprecedented intrinsic energy resolution (0.113 eV). The uncertainty analysis of both energy resolution and photon state assignment has been discussed. The thermal properties of the superconductive device have been studied by fitting the bias curves to evaluate the theoretical limit of the energy resolution.