Improvement of the detection efficiency calibration and homogeneity measurement of Si-SPAD detectors

Abstract

BackgroundSilicon single-photon avalanche diodes (Si-SPADs) are the most used devices for measuring ultra-weak optical radiant fluxes in many quantum technology fields, such as quantum optics, quantum communication, quantum computing, etc. In all these fields, the detection efficiency is the main parameter, which has to be accurately known for achieving reliable measurements. In this paper we present the improvements performed on the setup described in López et al. (J Mod Opt 62:S21–S27, 2015) for determining the detection efficiency of Si-SPAD detectors with a low measurement uncertainty. The improvement arises from the precise alignment of the Si-SPAD detector and the low deviation reached between the total calculated filter transmission and the individual filter transmission measurements (≤0.05%) performed with an integrating sphere with attached Si-photodiode as standard detector.Results The relative standard uncertainty of the Si-SPAD detection efficiency measurement achieved is now as low as ~0.16%. Furthermore, the investigation of the detection efficiency homogeneity of two commercial Si-SPAD detectors from different manufacturers and with different sensor diameters is also presented. The obtained homogeneity is ≤2.2% within a region of diameter of 40 μm.ConclusionsThe detailed analysis presented in this paper shows the potential for achieving low measurement uncertainties for Si-SPAD detector calibration even in the low photon flux range. The low uncertainties are only to be realized for reproducible measurement conditions, i.e. in specific for equal beam sizes and beam shapes and well as for an irradiation of equal active areas of the detector. This, however, will be difficult to obtain when measurements are performed at different national metrology institutes.

Metrology Perspective of Single‐Photon Detectors: Review on Global Calibration Methods

“…Reproduced under the terms of Creative Commons CC‐BY license. [ 102 ] Copyright 2016, The Authors, published by Springer Nature.…”

“…The double attenuator technique had high accuracy; however, the filter transmission measurements contributed significantly to the overall uncertainty in determining the detection efficiency. Dhoska et al [ 102 ] addressed this problem and presented an improvement in the detection efficiency uncertainty ranging from 0.3% to as low as 0.16% (relative standard uncertainty). The uncertainty was improved by overcoming the laser interference effects which existed in the previous setup with the help of an integrating sphere.…”

Microscale mapping of SPAD photon detection probability

“…Recently, several studies have been carried out to characterize SiPMs in terms of amplitude and timing [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], optical cross talk [11][12][13], avalanche size [12], and photon detection probability (PDP) [11,[13][14][15][16][17].…”