Demonstration of sub-3 ps temporal resolution with a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector

Abstract

Improving the temporal resolution of single photon detectors has an impact on many applications 1 , such as increased data rates and transmission distances for both classical 2 and quantum 3-5 optical communication systems, higher spatial resolution in laser ranging and observation of shorter-lived fluorophores in biomedical imaging 6 . In recent years, superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors 7,8 (SNSPDs) have emerged as the highest efficiency time-resolving single-photon counting detectors available in the near infrared 9 . As the detection mechanism in SNSPDs occurs on picosecond time scales 10 , SNSPDs have been demonstrated with exquisite temporal resolution below 15 ps [11][12][13][14][15] . We reduce this value to 2.7±0.2 ps at 400 nm and 4.6±0.2 ps at 1550 nm, using a specialized niobium nitride (NbN) SNSPD. The observed photon-energy dependence of the temporal resolution and detection latency suggests that intrinsic effects make a significant contribution.Temporal resolution in SNSPDs, commonly referred to as jitter, is characterized by the width of the temporal distribution of signal outputs with respect to the photon arrival times. This statistical distribution is known as the instrument response function (IRF), and its width is commonly evaluated as

Photonic quantum information processing: A concise review

“…Research on superconducting detectors is still ongoing, aimed at understanding detection mechanisms in different types of nanowire materials [54][55][56][57][58] , improving its performance in terms of reset times 59 and time jitter 60,61 , and developing new methods of accurate detection efficiency measurements 62 . Although intrinsic dark counts are low, SNSPDs are susceptible to picking up background thermal radiation from the input fiber's roomtemperature environment-this can be overcome by spectral filtering.…”

Nanowire single-photon detectors made of atomic layer-deposited niobium nitride

“…Although the absolute values of j c for the ALD-NbN bridges were significantly lower than the ones for sputtered NbN (9 compared to 23 MA/cm 2 for w = 0.1 µm), due to a higher ρ 0 and a lower T c , the calculated ratios of I c to I dep are comparable, reaching almost 0.6 at the minimal width of 0.1 µm ( figure 3). According to [6,23], a higher ratio I c /I dep should lead to higher internal detection efficiencies for lower-energy photons and to a smaller intrinsic timing jitter.…”

“…Key properties of SNSPDs include the spectral detection efficiency and the timing resolution limited by the timing jitter. By means of material research and optimization of the detector geometry and readout electronics, detection efficiencies of over 90 % at 1550 nm and a timing resolution as low as 3 ps have been shown recently [5,6]. This sets SNSPDs apart from competing single-photon detectors (see table 1.1 in [7]).…”

Single-channel electronic readout of a multipixel superconducting nanowire single photon detector

“…Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) have become increasingly prevalent across many areas of optical sensing [1]. They are particularly suited in applications which require high efficiency, low noise and low jitter when measuring low numbers of photons [2][3][4]. These devices do not resolve the number of photons; rather, they fire if at least one photon is incident.…”