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Applied Physics Letters

Origins and correction of secondary peaks in timing jitter of high-speed superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors

Dianpeng Wang, You Xiao, Zhen Wan, Chaomeng Ding, Hongxin Xu, Jia Huang, Jiamin Xiong, Lixing You, Hao Li

Published Apr 20, 2026• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) offer high detection speeds and excellent timing resolution, enabling numerous applications such as high-speed quantum communication and deep-space laser communication. However, at high count rates, timing jitter histograms deviate from a Gaussian profile and exhibit prominent secondary peaks, degrading jitter performance metrics such as full width at 10% maximum and full width at 1% maximum. This work identifies two distinct physical origins of these secondary peaks: multiphoton responses within a single excitation pulse and pulse pileup accompanied by time walk at high repetition rates. By experimentally isolating these mechanisms and applying corresponding statistical time-offset corrections, a near-Gaussian jitter distribution is restored. These results clarify the physics of secondary peaks in SNSPDs and provide a route to achieving simultaneous high counting rates and low timing jitter.

DOI
10.1063/5.0323786

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Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) offer high detection speeds and excellent timing resolution, enabling numerous applications such as high-speed quantum communication and deep-space laser communication. However, at high count rates, timing jitter histograms deviate from a Gaussian profile and exhibit prominent secondary peaks, degrading jitter performance metrics such as full width at 10% maximum and full width at 1% maximum. This work identifies two distinct physical origins of these secondary peaks: multiphoton responses within a single excitation pulse and pulse pileup accompanied by time walk at high repetition rates. By experimentally isolating these mechanisms and applying corresponding statistical time-offset corrections, a near-Gaussian jitter distribution is restored. These results clarify the physics of secondary peaks in SNSPDs and provide a route to achieving simultaneous high counting rates and low timing jitter.
Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) have demonstrated timing jitter in the few-picosecond regime, yet their timing resolution deteriorates substantially under high-count-rate operation. Existing interpretations mainly attribute this degradation to deterministic waveform distortions, such as multiphoton responses and pulse pile-up, yet the experimentally observed jitter broadening at high count rates cannot be fully accounted for within this picture. Here, we show that stochastic baseline fluctuations arising from finite-memory readout dynamics constitute an intrinsic source of the count-rate-dependent timing jitter in SNSPD systems. For stochastically arriving photons, overlapping recovery responses accumulate in the readout chain and generate statistically fluctuating baselines, which are converted into timing uncertainty through threshold-based timing extraction. We develop a stochastic-process framework that quantitatively connects photon statistics, readout dynamics, and timing jitter. The framework predicts characteristic scaling behaviors, including a nonmonotonic dependence of baseline fluctuations under pulsed excitation with a maximum near half of the repetition frequency. These predictions are quantitatively verified through systematic variations of count rate, circuit time constant, and detector dynamical properties. Our results identify stochastic baseline dynamics as a fundamental mechanism limiting timing resolution in high-count-rate SNSPD operation and provide a general framework for optimizing finite-memory high-speed photon-counting systems.
Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) are a leading detector type for time correlated single photon counting, especially in the near-infrared. When operated at high count rates, SNSPDs exhibit increased timing jitter caused by internal device properties and features of the RF amplification chain. Variations in RF pulse height and shape lead to variations in the latency of timing measurements. To compensate for this, we demonstrate a calibration method that correlates delays in detection events with the time elapsed between pulses. The increase in jitter at high rates can be largely canceled in software by applying corrections derived from the calibration process. We demonstrate our method with a single-pixel tungsten silicide SNSPD and show it decreases high count rate jitter. The technique is especially effective at removing a long tail that appears in the instrument response function at high count rates. At a count rate of 11.4 MCounts/s, we reduce the full width at 1% maximum level (FW1%M) by 45%. The method, therefore, enables certain quantum communication protocols that are rate-limited by the FW1%M metric to operate almost twice as fast.
Low timing jitter is a unique merit of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) for time-correlated applications. Quantitative analysis was performed for the SNSPD system. Aided by an oscilloscope with an optimal signal amplitude, we were able to measure a full width at half-maximum system timing jitter as low as 14.2 ps for a high-switching-current SNSPD using a room-temperature low-noise amplifier. When using a time-correlated single-photon counting module, the system timing jitter was 17.3 ps. The detector's intrinsic timing jitter was estimated at ∼12.0 ps.
Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors are a key technology for quantum information and science due to their high efficiency, low timing jitter, and low dark counts. In this work, we present a detector for single 1550 nm photons with up to 78% detection efficiency, timing jitter below 50 ps FWHM, 158 counts/s dark count rate - as well as a world-leading maximum count rate of 1.5 giga-counts/s at 3 dB compression. The PEACOQ detector (Performance-Enhanced Array for Counting Optical Quanta) comprises a linear array of 32 straight superconducting niobium nitride nanowires which span the mode of an optical fiber. This design supports high count rates with minimal penalties for detection efficiency and timing jitter. We show how these trade-offs can be mitigated by implementing independent read-out for each nanowire and by using a temporal walk correction technique to reduce count-rate dependent timing jitter. These detectors make quantum communication practical on a 10 GHz clock.
Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors are a key technology for quantum information and science due to their high efficiency, low timing jitter, and low dark counts. In this work, we present a detector for single 1550 nm photons with up to 78% detection efficiency, timing jitter below 50 ps FWHM, 158 counts/s dark count rate, as well as a maximum count rate of 1.5 giga-counts/s at 3 dB compression. The PEACOQ detector (Performance-Enhanced Array for Counting Optical Quanta) comprises a linear array of 32 straight superconducting niobium nitride nanowires that span the mode of an optical fiber. This design supports high count rates with minimal penalties for detection efficiency and timing jitter. We show how these trade-offs can be mitigated by implementing independent readout for each nanowire and by using a temporal walk correction technique to reduce count-rate dependent timing jitter. These detectors make quantum communication practical on a 10 GHz clock.