Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detector With a System Detection Efficiency Over 80% at 940-nm Wavelength

Abstract

Implementations of quantum information require single-photon detectors (SPDs) with high detection efficiency (DE) at a wavelength of 940 nm, which is a challenge for the available semiconducting SPDs. Superconducting nanowire SPDs (SNSPDs) are capable of detecting visible and near-infrared single photons with high DE. However, these detection capabilities place stringent design requirements on the cavity and nanowire geometry structures. We design, fabricate, and measure SNSPDs with high DE optimized for the 940-nm wavelength. The NbN SNSPDs were fabricated on 1-D photonic crystals for high optical absorptance. By tuning the filling factor of the nanowire through numerical simulations and experiments, we were able to obtain an SNSPD (7 nm thick, 125 nm width, and 0.57 filling factor, as well as active area of 18 * 18 μm) with a saturated system DE of 83.6 ± 3.7%, at a dark count rate of 10 Hz, and a low polarization dependence of 1.17 ± 0.02. To our best knowledge, this is the highest value reported for NbN SNSPDs at 940-nm wavelength. The availability of an SNSPD with high system DE at 940 nm may have a profound impact in the field of photonic quantum technologies, such as multiphoton entanglement.

Keywords

• Niobium nitride (NbN)
• superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs)
• system detection efficiency
• quantum information