Experimental investigation of the detection mechanism in WSi nanowire superconducting single photon detectors

Gaudio, R.; Renema, Jelmer J.; Zhou, Zili; Verma, Varun B.; Lita, Adriana E.; Shainline, Jeffrey M.; Stevens, Martin J.; Mirin, Richard P.; Nam, Sae Woo; Exter, M. P. van; Dood, M. J. A. de; Fiore, Andrea

doi:10.1063/1.4958687

Cited by 19 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Research on superconducting detectors is still ongoing, aimed at understanding detection mechanisms in different types of nanowire materials [54][55][56][57][58] , improving its performance in terms of reset times 59 and time jitter 60,61 , and developing new methods of accurate detection efficiency measurements 62 . Although intrinsic dark counts are low, SNSPDs are susceptible to picking up background thermal radiation from the input fiber's roomtemperature environment-this can be overcome by spectral filtering.…”

Section: A Detecting a Photonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Photonic quantum information processing: A concise review

Slussarenko

Pryde

2019

Applied Physics Reviews

412

308

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Photons have been a flagship system for studying quantum mechanics, advancing quantum information science, and developing quantum technologies. Quantum entanglement, teleportation, quantum key distribution and early quantum computing demonstrations were pioneered in this technology because photons represent a naturally mobile and low-noise system with quantum-limited detection readily available. The quantum states of individual photons can be manipulated with very high precision using interferometry, an experimental staple that has been under continuous development since the 19th century. The complexity of photonic quantum computing device and protocol realizations has raced ahead as both underlying technologies and theoretical schemes have continued to develop. Today, photonic quantum computing represents an exciting path to medium-and large-scale processing. It promises to out aside its reputation for requiring excessive resource overheads due to inefficient two-qubit gates. Instead, the ability to generate large numbers of photons-and the development of integrated platforms, improved sources and detectors, novel noise-tolerant theoretical approaches, and more-have solidified it as a leading contender for both quantum information processing and quantum networking. Our concise review provides a flyover of some key aspects of the field, with a focus on experiment. Apart from being a short and accessible introduction, its many references to in-depth articles and longer specialist reviews serve as a launching point for deeper study of the field. CONTENTS arXiv:1907.06331v1 [quant-ph]

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Section: A Detecting a Photonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Photonic quantum information processing: A concise review

Slussarenko

Pryde

2019

Applied Physics Reviews

412

308

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“…The nonequilibrium dynamics of this hotspot are a topic of broad interest in superconducting detectors, but precise modeling of the physical process remains an open topic of research. While there have been intense experimental [2][3][4][5][6][7][8] and theoretical [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] efforts to understand the details of the detection mechanism in SNSPDs, there is still debate over the most appropriate model for understanding this nonequilibrium process in different regimes of photon energy, bias current, and temperature. Considerable effort has been focused on understanding the internal efficiency of nanowire detectors as a means of validating detection models, but less attention has been given to the timing properties predicted by these models.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intrinsic Timing Jitter and Latency in Superconducting Nanowire Single-photon Detectors

et al. 2019

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We analyze the origin of the intrinsic timing jitter in superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) in terms of fluctuations in the latency of the detector response, which is determined by the microscopic physics of the photon detection process. We demonstrate that fluctuations in the physical parameters which determine the latency give rise to the intrinsic timing jitter. We develop a general description of latency by introducing the explicit time dependence of the internal detection efficiency. By considering the dynamic Fano fluctuations together with static spatial inhomogeneities, we study the details of the connection between latency and timing jitter. We develop both a simple phenomenological model and a more general microscopic model of detector latency and timing jitter based on the solution of the generalized time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equations for the 1D hotbelt geometry. While the analytical model is sufficient for qualitative interpretation of recent data, the general approach establishes the framework for a quantitative analysis of detector latency and the fundamental limits of intrinsic timing jitter. These theoretical advances can be used to interpret the results of recent experiments measuring the dependence of detection latency and timing jitter on photon energy to the few-picosecond level.

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“…For this reason, studying electron-phonon interaction and cooling of non-equilibrium electron and phonon distributions in materials, which are used for radiation detection is one of the central problems for all sensors.A new class of amorphous superconductors for SNSPDs, and in the first instance WSi, attracted immediate attention. Subsequently, electron-phonon interaction in WSi was studied by applying pump probe [20] and magnetoconductance [21] measurements, while the detection mechanism was investigated with quantum detector tomography [22]. The experimental work [20] utilised a time resolved two-photon detection technique to study the evolution of the hotspot in current-carrying nanowire under the conditions that the nanowire remains superconducting.…”

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confidence: 99%

Nonbolometric bottleneck in electron-phonon relaxation in ultrathin WSi films

Sidorova¹,

Kozorezov

Semenov

et al. 2018

Phys. Rev. B

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We developed the model of internal phonon bottleneck to describe the energy exchange between the acoustically soft ultra-thin metal film and acoustically rigid substrate. Discriminating phonons in the film into two groups, escaping and non-escaping, we show that electrons and non-escaping phonons may form a unified subsystem, which is cooled down only due to interactions with escaping phonons, either due to direct phonon conversion or indirect sequential interaction with an electronic system. Using an amplitude-modulated absorption of the sub-THz radiation technique, we studied electron-phonon relaxation in ultra-thin disordered films of tungsten silicide. We found an experimental proof of the internal phonon bottleneck. The experiment and simulation based on the proposed model agree well, resulting in e−ph~ 140-190 ps at C = 3.4 K supporting the results of earlier measurements by independent techniques. downslide, until the excited volume containing highly non-equilibrium quasiparticles and phonons, termed as a hotspot, is formed [15]. The details of this process play an important role in SNSPDs and were the focus of recent work [18], where the dominant role of electron-phonon interactions over electron-electron interactions was emphasized even in strongly disordered NbN and WSi where electron-electron interaction is strongly enhanced. Another aspect of hotspot formation is phonon loss into a substrate, defining energy density and hence equilibration rates [18] and fluctuations [19]. The energy exchange between the film and the substrate controls the nucleation and growth of normal domain, resulting in photon count. The latter is also influenced by the strength of electron-phonon, phonon-electron interactions and phonon escape from the film. For this reason, studying electron-phonon interaction and cooling of non-equilibrium electron and phonon distributions in materials, which are used for radiation detection is one of the central problems for all sensors.A new class of amorphous superconductors for SNSPDs, and in the first instance WSi, attracted immediate attention. Subsequently, electron-phonon interaction in WSi was studied by applying pump probe [20] and magnetoconductance [21] measurements, while the detection mechanism was investigated with quantum detector tomography [22]. The experimental work [20] utilised a time resolved two-photon detection technique to study the evolution of the hotspot in current-carrying nanowire under the conditions that the nanowire remains superconducting. Relaxation times of the order of hundreds of picoseconds were found and interpreted in [23] using the kinetic model of hotspot relaxation, where self-recombination of non-equilibrium quasiparticles plays a dominant role. The characteristic electron-phonon time 0 [24], which depends on material, was found to be 0.84 -1.0 ns [20] for tungsten rich WSi. . Thus, electron-phonon relaxation in WSi turned out to be slow in comparison with conventional SNSPD materials, such as NbN and NbTiN (where the measured time of relaxation of ...

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Experimental investigation of the detection mechanism in WSi nanowire superconducting single photon detectors

Cited by 19 publications

References 42 publications

Photonic quantum information processing: A concise review

Photonic quantum information processing: A concise review

Intrinsic Timing Jitter and Latency in Superconducting Nanowire Single-photon Detectors

Nonbolometric bottleneck in electron-phonon relaxation in ultrathin WSi films

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