Plasmonic structure integrated single-photon detectors optimized to maximize polarization contrast

TL;DR

This paper uses numerical optimization to design plasmonic structures integrated with superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors, significantly enhancing polarization contrast for improved photon selectivity.

Contribution

It introduces wavelength-scaled, optimized plasmonic structures integrated with SNSPDs to maximize polarization contrast, demonstrating different geometries and optical responses.

Findings

Achieved polarization contrast up to 1.90*10^13 in optimized structures.

Different geometries exhibit distinct angle-dependent optical responses.

Optimization criteria significantly influence the resulting structure performance.

Abstract

Numerical optimization was performed via COMSOL Multiphysics to maximize the polarization contrast of superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs). SNSPDs were integrated with four different types of one-dimensional periodic plasmonic structures capable of mediating p-polarized photon selectivity to the niobium-nitride superconducting nanowire pattern. Optimization with two different criteria regarding the maximal tilting resulted in wavelength-scaled periodic integrated structures, which have different geometrical parameters, and exhibit different polar angle dependent optical response and dispersion characteristics, as well as accompanying near-field phenomena at the extrema. Polarization contrast of 6.37*10^2 and 3.28*10^2 - 6.86*10^11 and 1.42*10^11 - 1.81*10^13 and 7.87*10^12 - 1.90*10^3 and 1.15*10^5 can be achieved in nanocavity-, nanocavity-deflector-, nanocavity-double-deflector-, nanocavity-trench-array-integrated P-SNSPDs optimized with 85 degree and 80 degree criterion regarding the maximal tilting.