Quantum and Classical Characterization of Single/Few Photon Detectors

Mingolla, M. G.; Piacentini, Fabrizio; Avella, Alessio; Gramegna, Marco; Lolli, L.; Meda, A.; Berchera, I. Ruo; Taralli, E.; Traina, P.; Rajteri, M.; Brida, G.; Degiovanni, I. P.; Genovese, M.

doi:10.1166/qm.2015.1275

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…For completeness, we mention that quantum efficiency does not represent the whole behavior of a detector, which can be described completely by a set of measurement operators known as the positive operator-valued measure (POVM). The POVM reconstruction has been realized in many experiments [178][179][180][181][182][183][184], even if they can not be considered absolute techniques since they exploit intense calibrated sources and calibrated attenuators to provide wellknown and controlled input states.…”

Section: Detector Absolute Calibrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Photon-number correlation for quantum enhanced imaging and sensing

Meda¹,

Losero²,

Samantaray³

et al. 2017

J. Opt.

112

106

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In this review we present the potentialities and the achievements of the use of non-classical photon number correlations in twin beams (TWB) states for many applications, ranging from imaging to metrology. Photon number correlations in the quantum regime are easy to be produced and are rather robust against unavoidable experimental losses, and noise in some cases, if compared to the entanglement, where loosing one photon can completely compromise the state and its exploitable advantage. Here, we will focus on quantum enhanced protocols in which only phase-insensitive intensity measurements (photon number counting) are performed, which allow probing transmission/absorption properties of a system, leading for example to innovative target detection schemes in a strong background. In this framework, one of the advantages is that the sources experimentally available emit a wide number of pairwise correlated modes, which can be intercepted and exploited separately, for example by many pixels of a camera, providing a parallelism, essential in several applications, like wide field sub-shot-noise imaging and quantum enhanced ghost imaging. Finally, non-classical correlation enables new possibilities in quantum radiometry, e.g. the possibility of absolute calibration of a spatial resolving detector from the on-off-single photon regime to the

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Section: Detector Absolute Calibrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Photon-number correlation for quantum enhanced imaging and sensing

Meda¹,

Losero²,

Samantaray³

et al. 2017

J. Opt.

112

106

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It is applicable to setups where no information concerning the state of the single-photon detector with respect to its holdoff state is available, e.g. from a heralding event or an 'armed'-signal of the detector itself [24][25][26][27]. Here we apply that model, and an improved version of it, to recover the quantum efficiency of single-photon detectors based on avalanche diodes, and compare the results to a software-based method that ex post identifies and extracts only valid trigger events from time-stamped data .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unexpected detection rate dependence of the intrinsic detection efficiency in single-photon detectors based on avalanche diodes

Raupach,

Degiovanni,

Georgieva

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Single-photon detectors are a pivotal component in photonic quantum technologies. A precise and comprehensive calibration of the intrinsic detection efficiency is of utmost importance to ensure the proper evaluation of the performance in view of the specific technological application of interest, such as the protection against security breaches in quantum cryptographic solutions. Here we report on a systematic study on and comprehensive analysis of the estimation of the intrinsic detection efficiency of two commercial single-photon detectors based on single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) for various mean photon numbers and at high laser pulse repetition rates using different techniques. We observed an unexpected and significant drop in intrinsic detection efficiency at detection rates of 10 % and higher relative to the maximum detection rate. It is demonstrated that for data analysis a statistical model for the detection rate conveniently can be used if no timestamped data are available. We conclude that the full characterization of single-photon detectors used in critical applications should include the sensitivity of their intrinsic detection efficiency to high event rates.

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