Stable, high-performance operation of a fiber-coupled superconducting nanowire avalanche photon detector

TL;DR

This paper introduces a stable, fiber-coupled superconducting nanowire avalanche photon detector with high efficiency, fast response, and low dark counts, operating reliably at 2.3 K without a choke inductor.

Contribution

The authors demonstrate a novel fiber-coupled NbTiN superconducting nanowire avalanche photon detector with improved stability, speed, and efficiency, eliminating the need for a choke inductor.

Findings

Achieved 81.0% system detection efficiency

Demonstrated 68 ps timing jitter

Operates with low dark count rate of 6.8 counts/s

Abstract

We present a stable and high-performance fiber-coupled NbTiN superconducting nanowire avalanche photon detector (SNAP). We demonstrate afterpulse-free operation in serially connected two SNAPs (SC-2SNAP), even in the absence of a choke inductor, achieving a 7.7 times faster response speed than standard SSPDs. The SC-2SNAP device showed a system detection efficiency (SDE) of 81.0% with wide bias current margin, a dark count rate of 6.8 counts/s, and full width at half maximum timing jitter of 68 ps, operating at 2.3 K.