Scaling waveguide-integrated superconducting nanowire single-photon detector solutions to large numbers of independent optical channels

TL;DR

This paper presents a scalable, multi-channel superconducting nanowire single-photon detector system integrated with photonic circuits, enabling high-efficiency, precise photon counting across many independent optical channels for quantum and sensing applications.

Contribution

It introduces a compact, scalable detector package capable of interfacing with 64 optical channels, demonstrating high detection efficiency and timing accuracy in a portable cryogenic setup.

Findings

Achieved up to 60% system detection efficiency

Demonstrated 26.0 ps timing accuracy

Supported up to 64 channels in a portable cryostat

Abstract

Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors are an enabling technology for modern quantum information science and are gaining attractiveness for the most demanding photon counting tasks in other fields. Embedding such detectors in photonic integrated circuits enables additional counting capabilities through nanophotonic functionalization. Here we show how a scalable number of waveguide-integrated superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors can be interfaced with independent fiber optic channels on the same chip. Our plug-and-play detector package is hosted inside a compact and portable closed-cycle cryostat providing cryogenic signal amplification for up to 64 channels. We demonstrate state-of-the-art photon counting performance with up to 60 % system detection efficiency and down to 26.0 ps timing accuracy for individually addressable detectors. Our multi-channel single photon receiver offers exciting measurement capabilities for future quantum communication, remote sensing and imaging applications.