Superconducting Single-photon Detectors Made of Ultra-thin VN Films

We optimized technology of thin VN films deposition in order to study VN-based superconducting single-photon detectors. Investigation of the main VN film parameters showed that this material has lower resistivity compared to commonly used NbN. Fabricated from obtained films devices showed 100% intrinsic detection efficiency at 900 nm, at the temperature of 1.7 K starting with the bias current of 0.7·

Gated Mode Superconducting Nanowire Single Photon Detectors

Single Photon Detectors (SPD) are fundamental to quantum optics and quantum information. Superconducting Nanowire SPDs (SNSPD) [1] provide high performance in terms of quantum efficiency (QE), dark count rate (DCR) and timing jitter [2], but have limited maximum count rate (MCR) when operated as a free-running mode (FM) detector [3, 4]. However, high count rates are needed for many applications like quantum computing [5] and communication [6], and laser ranging [7]. Here we report the first operation of SNSPDs in a gated mode (GM) that exploits a single photon triggered latching phenomenon to detect photons. We demonstrate operation of a large active area single element GM-SNSPD at 625MHz, one order of magnitude faster than its FM counterpart. Contrary to FM-SNSPDs, the MCR in GM can be pushed to GHz range without a compromise on the active area or QE, while reducing the DCR

Superconducting parallel nanowire detector with photon number resolving functionality

We present a new photon number resolving detector (PNR), the Parallel Nanowire Detector (PND), which uses spatial multiplexing on a subwavelength scale to provide a single electrical output proportional to the photon number. The basic structure of the PND is the parallel connection of several NbN superconducting nanowires (100 nm-wide, few nm-thick), folded in a meander pattern. Electrical and optical equivalents of the device were developed in order to gain insight on its working principle. PNDs were fabricated on 3-4 nm thick NbN films grown on sapphire (substrate temperature TS=900C) or MgO (TS=400C) substrates by reactive magnetron sputtering in an Ar/N2 gas mixture. The device performance was characterized in terms of speed and sensitivity. The photoresponse shows a full width at half maximum (FWHM) as low as 660ps. PNDs showed counting performance at 80 MHz repetition rate. Building the histograms of the photoresponse peak, no multiplication noise buildup is observable and a one photon quantum efficiency can be estimated to be QE=3% (at 700 nm wavelength and 4.2 K temperature). The PND significantly outperforms existing PNR detectors in terms of simplicity, sensitivity, speed, and multiplication noise

Superconducting nanowire photon number resolving detector at telecom wavelength

The optical-to-electrical conversion, which is the basis of optical detectors, can be linear or nonlinear. When high sensitivities are needed single-photon detectors (SPDs) are used, which operate in a strongly nonlinear mode, their response being independent of the photon number. Nevertheless, photon-number resolving (PNR) detectors are needed, particularly in quantum optics, where n-photon states are routinely produced. In quantum communication, the PNR functionality is key to many protocols for establishing, swapping and measuring entanglement, and can be used to detect photon-number-splitting attacks. A linear detector with single-photon sensitivity can also be used for measuring a temporal waveform at extremely low light levels, e.g. in long-distance optical communications, fluorescence spectroscopy, optical time-domain reflectometry. We demonstrate here a PNR detector based on parallel superconducting nanowires and capable of counting up to 4 photons at telecommunication wavelengths, with ultralow dark count rate and high counting frequency