Improving detection efficiency of superconducting nanowire single-photon detector using multilayer antireflection coating

Superconducting-nanowire single-photon-detector linear array

Constriction-limited detection efficiency of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors

We investigate the source of large variations in the observed detection efficiencies of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors between many nominally identical devices. Through both electrical and optical measurements, we infer that these variations arise from “constrictions:” highly localized regions of the nanowires where the effective cross-sectional area for superconducting curren...

Design of a polarization-insensitive superconducting nanowire single photon detector with high detection efficiency

Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) deliver superior performance over their competitors in the near-infrared regime. However, these detectors have an intrinsic polarization dependence on the incident wave because of their one-dimensional meander structure. In this paper, we propose an approach to eliminate the polarization sensitivity of SNSPDs by using near-field optics t...

Enhancing Detection Efficiency by Applying an Optical Cavity Structure in a Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detector

We report on the enhancement of system detection efficiency in a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) by applying the optical cavity structure. The nanowire was made using 4nm-thick NbN thin films and covered with an SiO cavity and Au mirror designed for 1300–1600 nm wavelengths. The device is mounted into fibercoupled packages, and installed in a practical multichannel syste...

Dark counts of superconducting nanowire single-photon detector under illumination.

An abnormal increase in the SDE was observed for superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) when the bias current (I(b)) was close to the switching current (I(sw)). By introducing the time-correlated single-photon counting technique, we investigated the temporal histogram of the detection counts of an SNSPD under illumination. The temporal information helps us to distinguish phot...