Influence of superconductor dirtiness on the SNSPD sensitivity-bandwidth trade-off

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the dirtiness level of superconducting nanowires fundamentally influences the sensitivity and bandwidth trade-off in SNSPDs, and that controlled dirtiness can optimize device performance.

Contribution

It introduces a physical model linking superconductor dirtiness to SNSPD sensitivity-bandwidth trade-offs, highlighting dirtiness as a tunable parameter for device optimization.

Findings

Dirtiness enforces a fundamental sensitivity-bandwidth trade-off.

A certain dirtiness level is necessary for single photon detection.

Dirtiness can be engineered to optimize SNSPD performance.

Abstract

Practical superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) demonstrate a strong trade-off between detection sensitivity and the reset time. Often, there are wide variations in sensitivity and response times from SNSPDs of the same superconducting material. Here, using detailed physical models, we show that the dirtiness in a superconductor enforces a sensitivity and bandwidth trade-off in all practical devices. More importantly, a certain degree of dirtiness is a necessary requirement for achieving single photon detection. Under typical bias conditions close to the transition setpoints, the minimum number of photons required to register a voltage pulse decreases by the dirtiness parameter (Ioffe-Regel parameter) and the reset time of SNSPD increases by the same dirtiness parameter, thereby giving a constant value for the sensitivity-bandwidth product. The constant is weakly modified by biasing current and the temperature. Since dirtiness in the superconducting nanowire is a physically controllable parameter with an important bearing on the final response of an SNSPD, this work opens new opportunities to develop SNSPD devices with engineered sensitivity-bandwidth setpoint as dictated by an application.