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APL Photonics

A TES single-photon detector demonstrating high-energy-resolution, high efficiency, and ultra-low dark counts near 0.9 T c

Peizhan Li, Wen Zhang, Zhi-Fa Feng, ZhiJie Wang, Q. X. Ma, Jiaqiang Zhong, Wei Miao, Qijun Yao, Jing Li, Sheng‐Cai Shi

Published Dec 1, 2025• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Transition-edge sensors (TESs) are among the most promising technologies for single-photon detection, offering high quantum efficiency, low dark count rates, and energy-resolving capabilities. However, optimal TES performance typically requires ultra-low temperatures below 100 mK, necessitating bulky dilution refrigerators or adiabatic demagnetization refrigerators, which limits their practical deployment. In this work, we demonstrate a titanium-based TES optimized for 1064 nm photon detection that achieves high performance at an elevated bath temperature of 220 mK—approximately 90% of its superconducting transition temperature, making it compatible with more compact sorption refrigerators. Through the integration of an optical cavity, a detailed complex impedance and noise characterization, and a systematic investigation of dark count sources, the detector achieves a system detection efficiency exceeding 97%, an energy resolution of 240 meV, and an intrinsic dark count rate as low as 2 × 10−4 cps. These findings significantly expand the applicability of TES single-photon detectors to practical photon-counting systems, such as quantum information and infrared astronomy.

DOI
10.1063/5.0293495

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Transition-edge sensors (TESs) are among the most promising technologies for single-photon detection, offering high quantum efficiency, low dark count rates, and energy-resolving capabilities. However, optimal TES performance typically requires ultra-low temperatures below 100 mK, necessitating bulky dilution refrigerators or adiabatic demagnetization refrigerators, which limits their practical deployment. In this work, we demonstrate a titanium-based TES optimized for 1064 nm photon detection that achieves high performance at an elevated bath temperature of 220 mK—approximately 90% of its superconducting transition temperature, making it compatible with more compact sorption refrigerators. Through the integration of an optical cavity, a detailed complex impedance and noise characterization, and a systematic investigation of dark count sources, the detector achieves a system detection efficiency exceeding 97%, an energy resolution of 240 meV, and an intrinsic dark count rate as low as 2 × 10−4 cps. These findings significantly expand the applicability of TES single-photon detectors to practical photon-counting systems, such as quantum information and infrared astronomy.
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Single-photon detectors operating at visible and near-infrared wavelengths with high detection efficiency and low noise are a requirement for many quantum-information applications. Superconducting transition-edge sensors (TESs) are capable of detecting visible and near-infrared light at the single-photon level and are capable of discriminating between one- and two-photon absorption events; however these capabilities place stringent design requirements on the TES heat capacity, thermometry, and optical detection efficiency. We describe the fabrication and evaluation of a fiber-coupled, photon-number-resolving TES detector optimized for absorption at 1550 and 1310 nm wavelengths. The measured system detection efficiency at 1556 nm is 95 % +/- 2 %, which to our knowledge is the highest system detection efficiency reported for a near-infrared single-photon detector.
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.
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.
Many quantum-information applications require high-efficiency, low-noise, single-photon detectors that operate at visible and near-infrared wavelengths. The tunable superconducting critical temperature and anomalously low electron-phonon coupling of tungsten make it a suitable material for the fabrication of transition-edge sensors (TESs) that meet these requirements. The quantum efficiency of a typical tungsten TES detector, intrinsically around 15% at 1550 nm, can be increased by placing the tungsten detector in a resonant cavity, but the performance of a device embedded in a cavity has not been tested previously. We demonstrate that the presence of the cavity does not adversely affect the sensitivity or response time, and we report on the device characteristics of a new generation of tungsten TESs with greater than 80% quantum efficiency at 1550 nm.
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%.