Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors: physics and applications

By Chandra M. Natarajan, Michael G. Tanner, Robert H. Hadfield. 2012

1,016 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Single-photon detectors based on superconducting nanowires (SSPDs or SNSPDs) have rapidly emerged as a highly promising photon-counting technology for infrared wavelengths. These devices offer high efficiency, low dark counts and excellent timing resolution. In this review, we consider the basic SNSPD operating principle and models of device behaviour. We give an overview of the evolution of SNSPD device design and the improvements in performance which have been achieved. We also evaluate device limitations and noise mechanisms. We survey practical refrigeration technologies and optical coupling schemes for SNSPDs. Finally we summarize promising application areas, ranging from quantum cryptography to remote sensing. Our goal is to capture a detailed snapshot of an emerging superconducting detector technology on the threshold of maturity.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/51dec200c3678d5a963d499b48631851ccad0b82

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Citations in the corpus

Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors for quantum information (2020, methodology): “(a) Schematic of the detection cycle; (b) a simplified circuit model of an SNSPD; and (c) the output signal of an SNSPD upon a detection event [31].”
Quantum metrology and its application in biology (2014, background): “ superconducting photodetectors, is that they allow photon-resolving detection { that is, they identify not only that a detection event has occurred, but also how many photons arrived at the detector [165]. While not strictly essential for quantum OCT, this allows separation of incident photon pairs”
Advances in quantum cryptography (2019, neutral): “In a superconducting nanowire single photon detector (SNSPD), the dead time is dominated by the time it takes to recover its supercurrent (which flows with zero resistance)—during which the nanowire is insensitive to any photon [247].”
Hybrid integrated quantum photonic circuits (2020, background): “Quantum photonic circuits consist of the following main building blocks, which underpin a number of applications: (1) singlephoton sources that ideally produce one photon per excitation pulse into a desired optical mode6; (2) efficient and fast single-photon detectors7; (3) reconfigurable photonic e”