Kinetic-inductance-limited reset time of superconducting nanowire photon counters

By A. Kerman, E. Dauler, W. Keicher, Joel K. W. Yang, K. Berggren, G. Gol'tsman, B. Voronov. 2005

470 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate the recovery of superconducting NbN-nanowire photon counters after detection of an optical pulse at a wavelength of 1550nm, and present a model that quantitatively accounts for our observations. The reset time is found to be limited by the large kinetic inductance of these nanowires, which forces a tradeoff between counting rate and either detection efficiency or active area. Devices of usable size and high detection efficiency are found to have reset times orders of magnitude longer than their intrinsic photoresponse time.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Radiation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/161f9cb2878841bdb0612a82c043b33b9e14a0ef

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Citations in the corpus

Multi-Element Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detector (2007, methodology): “These tests were performed using the same cryogenic probing station setup described in [2] and [3], with the addition of a second readout channel that included an RF electrical probe, bias T, battery-powered current source, attenuator, amplifier and DC block (Fig.”
Waveguide-integrated superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (2018, methodology): “Although optical stacks have been used to overcome this limitation [79], in general, for sufficient absorption efficiency, long meanders must be used [82], thus increasing the detector recovery time [21].”
Single-photon detectors for optical quantum information applications (2009, unknown): “The use of a single, long meander wire increases the overall inductance, lengthening the detector dead time 85 to around 10 ns for large-area detectors 86 — although this is a significant increase, it is still an order of magnitude faster than conventional photon counters.”
Single-photon generation and detection (2009, background): “Superconducting NbN detectors offer low timing jitter with an almost Gaussian temporal profile (68 ps FWHM [191]), fast recovery times (taking less than 10 ns to recover to 90% of the original detection efficiency [192]) and are sensitive to a wide range of wavelengths [193–195].”
Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors: physics and applications (2012, methodology): “A simple but elegant phenomenological model can be used to simulate the measurable output voltage pulse from an SNSPD biased at Ibias as shown in figure 1(b) [21, 22].”
Modeling the Electrical and Thermal Response of Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors (2007, background): “The inductor represented the kinetic inductance of the superconducting nanowire as explained in [5].”
Superconducting nanowire photon-number-resolving detector at telecommunication wavelengths (2008, background): “It can be reduced by engineering the dimensions of the nanowire (thus its kinetic inductanc”