We report an experimental test of the photodetection mechanism in a nanowire superconducting single photon detector. Detector tomography allows us to explore the 0.8-8 eV energy range via multiphoton excitations. High accuracy results enable a detailed comparison of the experimental data with theories for the mechanism of photon detection. We show that the temperature dependence of the efficiency of the superconducting single photon detector is determined not by the critical current but by the current associated with vortex unbinding. We find that both quasiparticle diffusion and vortices play a role in the detection event. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.117604 PACS numbers: 79.20.Ws, 03.65.Wj, 85.25.Oj Nanowire superconducting single photon detectors (SSPDs or SNSPDs) [1,2] are currently the most promising detection systems in the infrared, achieving detection efficiencies of up to 93% at 1550 nm [3]. Despite these technological advances, the fundamentals of the working principle of these detectors are poorly understood and under active investigation, both theoretically [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] and experimentally [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22].A typical SSPD consists of a few nm thin film of a superconducting material such as NbN or WSi, nanofabricated into a meandering wire geometry. When biased sufficiently close to the critical current of the superconductor, the energy of one or several photons can be enough to trigger a local transition to the resistive state, resulting in a detection event. The energy of the absorbed photon is distributed through an avalanchelike process, creating a nonequlibrium population of quasiparticles. This quasiparticle population then disrupts the supercurrent flow, resulting eventually in a detection event.In this Letter, we address the nature of this disruption, which lies at the heart of the photodetection mechanism in SSPDs. At present, there are three important open questions. First, it is unknown whether the detection event occurs when the energy of the incident photon causes a cylindrical volume inside the wire to transition to the normal state [see Fig. 1(a)] [1], or whether it is enough for the superconductivity to be weakened but not destroyed by the depletion of Cooper pairs over a more extended region [see Fig. 1The second open question is whether magnetic vortices play any role in the detection mechanism. There are two varieties of vortex-based models. The first is an extension of the normal-core model, where, a vortex-antivortex pair forms at the point where the photon is absorbed [ Fig. 1(c)] [5]. In the second, the weakening of superconductivity lowers the energy barrier for either a vortex crossing [6,23] or a vortex-antivortex pair crossing [ Fig. 1(d)].The last open question pertains to the temperature dependence of the photoresponse of SSPDs. Intuitively, one would expect the SSPD to be less efficient at lower temperatures, as the detector works by breaking superconductivity and the energy gap of a superconductor decreases with increasing temp...

Abstract:We present an experimental method to characterize multiphoton detectors with a small overall detection efficiency. We do this by separating the nonlinear action of the multiphoton detection event from linear losses in the detector. Such a characterization is a necessary step for quantum information protocols with single and multiphoton detectors and can provide quantitative information to understand the underlying physics of a given detector. This characterization is applied to a superconducting multiphoton nanodetector, consisting of an NbN nanowire with a bowtie-shaped subwavelength constriction. Depending on the bias current, this detector has regimes with single and multiphoton sensitivity. We present the first full experimental characterization of such a detector. Berggren, "Photon-number-resolution with sub-30-ps timing using multi-element superconducting nanowire single photon detectors," J. Mod. Optic. 56, 13 (2008).

Quantum photonic integration circuits are a promising approach to scalable quantum processing with photons. Waveguide single-photon-detectors (WSPDs) based on superconducting nanowires have been recently shown to be compatible with single-photon sources for a monolithic integration. While standard WSPDs offer single-photon sensitivity, more complex superconducting nanowire structures can be configured to have photon-number-resolving capability. In this work, we present waveguide photonnumber-resolving detectors (WPNRDs) on GaAs/Al 0.75 Ga 0.25 As ridge waveguides based on a series connection of nanowires. The detection of 0-4 photons has been demonstrated with a four-wire WPNRD, having a single electrical read-out. A device quantum efficiency ~24 % is reported at 1310 nm for the TE polarization.

Using detector tomography, we investigate the detection mechanism in NbN-based superconducting single photon detectors (SSPDs). We demonstrate that the detection probability uniquely depends on a particular linear combination of bias current and energy, for a large variation of bias currents, input energies and detection probabilities, producing a universal detection curve. We obtain this result by studying multiphoton excitations in a nanodetector with a sparsity-based tomographic method that allows factoring out of the optical absorption. We discuss the implication of our model system for the understanding of meander-type SSPDs.

We demonstrate a novel method to measure Nth-order (N=1,2,3,4) interferometric autocorrelation with high sensitivity and temporal resolution. It is based on the combination of linear absorption and nonlinear detection in a superconducting nanodetector, providing much higher efficiency than methods based on all-optical nonlinearities. Its temporal resolution is only limited by the quasiparticle energy relaxation time, which is directly measured to be in the 20 ps range for the NbN films used in this work. We present a general model of interferometric autocorrelation with these nonlinear detectors and discuss the comparison with other approaches and possible improvements.

A superconducting thin film with uniform properties is the key to realize nanowire superconducting single-photon detectors (SSPDs) with high performance and high yield. To investigate the uniformity of NbN films, we introduce and characterize simple detectors consisting of short nanowires with length ranging from 100nm to 15μm. Our nanowires, contrary to meander SSPDs, allow probing the homogeneity of NbN at the nanoscale. Experimental results, endorsed by a microscopic model, show the strongly inhomogeneous nature of NbN films on the sub-100nm scale.

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In recent years, photon-number-resolving (PNR) detectors have attracted great interest, mainly because they can play a key role in diverse application fields. A PNR detector with a large dynamic range would represent an ideal photon detector, bringing the linear response of conventional analogue detectors down to the single-photon level. Several technologies, such as InGaAs single photon avalanche detectors (SPADs), arrays of silicon photomultipliers, InGaAs SPADs with self-differencing circuits and transition edge sensors have shown photon number resolving capability. Superconducting nanowires provide free-running single-photon sensitivity from visible to mid-infrared frequencies, low dark counts, excellent timing resolution (<60 ps) and short dead time (∼10 ns), at an easily accessible temperature (2-3 K), but they do not inherently resolve the photon number. In this framework, PNR detectors based on arrays of superconducting nanowires have been proposed. In this article we describe a number of methods and device configurations that have been pursued to obtain PNR capability using superconducting nanowire detectors.