Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors and effect of accumulation and unsteady releases of excess energy in materials

TL;DR

This paper proposes using superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors as low-background environments to study noise accumulation in superconducting systems, aiming to improve quantum computing and expand applications in various scientific fields.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to investigate noise sources in superconducting systems using SNSPDs and aims to extend their sensitive wavelength range beyond 10 microns.

Findings

SNSPDs have extremely low dark-count backgrounds.

Using SNSPDs can help identify and mitigate noise in superconducting qubits.

Potential to extend SNSPD sensitivity above 10 microns for new applications.

Abstract

Universal fault-tolerant quantum computers, which promise to revolutionize computing, are currently limited by excessive noise in their constituent superconducting qubits. Determining the dominant sources of this excess noise will lead to a clearer understanding of how to mitigate it in future superconducting systems. Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors (SNSPDs) are devices that do not appear to suffer from such effects and have extremely low dark-count backgrounds. We propose to use SNSPDs as low-background laboratories to study noise accumulation processes in superconducting systems with the purpose of explaining and mitigating noise in related quantum information systems. Through these studies we also aim to increase the sensitive wavelengths of SNSPDs above the current limits of 10 microns, which would open new regimes for dark matter detection, biology, space sciences, and quantum sensing.