Potential of a Superconducting Photon Counter for Heterodyne Detection at Telecommunication Wavelength

Here, we report on successful operation of a NbN thin film superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) in a coherent mode (as a mixer) at the telecommunication wavelength of 1550 nm. Providing the Local Oscillator power of the order of a few picowatts, we were practically able to reach t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2016-09
Main Authors: Shcherbatenko, Mikhail, Lobanov, Yury, Semenov, Alexander, Kovalyuk, Vadim, Korneev, Alexander, Ozhegov, Roman, Kazakov, Alexander, Voronov, Boris M, Goltsman, Gregory N
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Low noise
Nanowires
Niobium nitride
Noise
Noise sensitivity
Photon counters
Sensors
Superconductivity
Thin films
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Summary:Here, we report on successful operation of a NbN thin film superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) in a coherent mode (as a mixer) at the telecommunication wavelength of 1550 nm. Providing the Local Oscillator power of the order of a few picowatts, we were practically able to reach the quantum noise limited sensitivity. The intermediate frequency gain bandwidth was limited by the spectral band of single-photon response pulse of the detector, which is proportional to the detector size. We observed gain bandwidth of 65 MHz and 140 MHz for 7x7 um^2 and 3x3 um^2 devices respectively. Tiny amount of the required Local Oscillator power and wide gain and noise bandwidths along with the needless of any Low Noise Amplification opens possibility for a photon counting heterodyne-born megapixel array development.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1609.02033