Journal
IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS
Volume 13, Issue 4, Pages 934-943Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/JSTQE.2007.905089
Keywords
energy resolution; nanostructured superconducting detectors; photon spectroscopy; single-photon detectors (SPDs); superconducting SPDs (SSPDs)
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Superconducting single-photon detectors (SSPDs) are nanostructured devices made from ultrathin superconducting films. They are typically operated at liquid helium temperature and exhibit high detection efficiency, in combination with very low dark counts, fast response time, and extremely low timing jitter, within a broad wavelength range from ultraviolet to mid-infrared (up to 6 mu m). SSPDs are very attractive for applications such as fiber-based telecommunication, where single-photon sensitivity and high photon-counting rates are required. We review the current state-of-the-art in the SSPD research and development, and compare the SSPD performance to the best semiconducting avalanche photodiodes and other superconducting photon detectors. Furthermore, we demonstrate that SSPDs can also be successfully implemented in photon-energy-resolving experiments. Our approach is based on the fact that the size of the hotspot, a nonsuperconducting region generated upon photon absorption, is linearly dependent on the photon energy. We introduce a statistical method, where, by measuring the SSPD system detection efficiency at different bias currents, we are able to resolve the wavelength of the incident photons with a resolution of 50 mn.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available