Tunable up-conversion single-photon detector at telecom wavelengths

Abstract

Up-conversion single-photon detectors (UCSPD) are based on sum-frequency generation of the telecom band single-photons to near-infrared wavelengths at which efficient and low-noise silicon single-photon detectors are available. Moreover, because of high dynamic range of silicon single-photon detectors, UCSPD is suitable for high-speed quantum communication. UCSPDs reported to date, however, have a very narrow fixed window of detectable wavelengths, severely limiting their applications in wavelength-multiplexed quantum networks. In this work, we report a tunable UCSPD module that covers the complete telecom C band, making it suitable for quantum communication networks based on sharing wavelength-multiplexed entangled photons.

Keywords

• frequency up-conversion
• quantum communication
• single-photon detector
• sum-frequency generation
• telecom c band