Sine gating detector with simple filtering for low-noise infra-red single photon detection at room temperature

TL;DR

This paper introduces a sine gating single photon detector with simple filtering that achieves low noise and high timing precision at telecom wavelengths, suitable for high-rate quantum key distribution at room temperature.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel sine gating scheme with low-pass filtering for efficient, low-noise single photon detection at room temperature, enabling longer-distance QKD.

Findings

Timing jitter of 130 ps achieved

Noise probability as low as 7E-7 per gate

Suitable for high-rate QKD over 25 km at room temperature

Abstract

We present and analyze a gated single photon avalanche detector using a sine gating scheme with a simple but effective low-pass filtering technique for fast low-noise single photon detection at telecom wavelength. The detector is characterized by 130 ps short gates applied with a frequency of 1.25 GHz, yields only 70 ps timing jitter and noise probabilities as low as 7E-7 per gate at 10% detection efficiency. We show that the detector is suitable for high rate quantum key distribution (QKD) and even at room temperature it could allow for QKD over distances larger than 25 km.