Gigahertz bandwidth photon counting

Abstract

Early applications driving the development of single photon sensitive detectors, such as fluorescence and photoluminescence spectroscopy, simply required low noise performance with kiloHertz and lower count rate requirements and minimal or no timing resolution. Newer applications, such as high data rate photon starved free space optical communications require photon counting at flux rates into megaphoton or gigaphoton per second regimes coupled with sub-nanosecond timing accuracy. With deep space optical communications as our application driver, we have developed and implemented systems to both characterize gigaHertz bandwidth single photon detectors as well as process photon count signals at rates beyond 100 megaphotons per second to implement communications links at data rates exceeding 100 megabits per second with efficiencies greater than two bits per detected photon. With these systems, we have implemented high bandwidth real-time systems using intensified photodiodes, visible light photon counter detectors, superconducting nanowire detectors, Geiger-mode semiconductor avalanche photodiodes, and negative avalanche feedback photon counters.

Proposal for a GHz count rate near-IR single-photon detector based on a nanoscale superconducting transition edge sensor

“…If the photon arrival times are randomly distributed, then the effective maximum count rate is decreased by an amount that depends on the required detection efficiency. 2 This decrease in the count rate for randomly arriving photons can be minimized by splitting the signal between multiple detectors.…”

“…Near-IR single-photon detection has important applications in quantum information, 1 photon-starved classical communication, 2 spectroscopy, 3 and CMOS circuit failure analysis. 4 Figures of merit for a single-photon detector include the detection efficiency, the maximum count rate, the dark count rate, and the jitter (the uncertainty in the photon arrival time).…”

Hybridization process for back-illuminated silicon Geiger-mode avalanche photodiode arrays

“…This introduces a limit on the instantaneous dynamic range [photons/sec] offered by these detectors. Increasingly, however, there is a need for fast time-correlated optical sensing, driven by applications in areas including communications 1 , active imaging 2,3 , and biology 4 . This need has pushed the development of multi-channel arrays of single-photon sensitive detectors.…”

Thin scintillators for ultrafast hard X-ray imaging

“…On the other hand, if the gigahertz rate is only needed for a few cycles, it is can be less challenging than achieving GHz rate continuously. The need for larger communication bandwidth, quantum communications, interplanetary communications, LiDAR imaging, have given rise to a variety of high-speed photon counting technologies that can potentially meet the single-photon counting requirement at gigahertz rates continuously [17].…”