High-efficiency superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors fabricated from MoSi thin-films

TL;DR

This paper reports the development of MoSi superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors with high efficiency, low jitter, and operation at relatively high cryogenic temperatures, advancing quantum photon detection technology.

Contribution

It introduces MoSi thin-film SNSPDs with record efficiency and low jitter, demonstrating comparable performance to WSi detectors at higher temperatures.

Findings

Maximum system detection efficiency of 87% at 1542 nm

Jitter of 76 ps achieved

Operation at temperatures up to 2.3 K

Abstract

We demonstrate high-efficiency superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) fabricated from MoSi thin-films. We measure a maximum system detection efficiency (SDE) of 87 +- 0.5 % at 1542 nm at a temperature of 0.7 K, with a jitter of 76 ps, maximum count rate approaching 10 MHz, and polarization dependence as low as 3.4 +- 0.7 % The SDE curves show saturation of the internal efficiency similar to WSi-based SNSPDs at temperatures as high as 2.3 K. We show that at similar cryogenic temperatures, MoSi SNSPDs achieve efficiencies comparable to WSi-based SNSPDs with nearly a factor of two reduction in jitter.