Design of a micrometer-long superconducting nanowire perfect absorber for efficient high-speed single-photon detection

Abstract

Despite very efficient superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) reported recently, combining their other performance advantages such as high speed and ultralow timing jitter in a single device still remains challenging. In this work, we present a perfect absorber model and the corresponding detector design based on a micrometer-long NbN nanowire integrated with a 2D photonic crystal cavity of ultrasmall mode volume, which promises simultaneous achievement of near-unity absorption, gigahertz counting rates, and broadband optical response with a 3 dB bandwidth of 71 nm. Compared to previous stand-alone meandered and waveguide-integrated SNSPDs, this perfect absorber design addresses the trade space in size, efficiency, speed, and bandwidth for realizing large on-chip single-photon detector arrays.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Jul 14, 2020
Source ID
10.1364/prj.390945

Entities

People

  • Chang-Ling Zou
  • Hong X Tang
  • Risheng Cheng
  • Sihao Wang

Organizations

  • Army Research Office
  • Office of Emerging Frontiers and Multidisciplinary Activities

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Quantum Dot Semiconductor Device Photonics and Graphene Optoelectronic Materials and THz Physics.

Technology Areas

  • Space