Superconducting wide strip photon detector with high critical current bank structure

Abstract

Superconducting strip single-photon detectors offer excellent photon detection performance and are indispensable tools for cutting-edge optical science and technologies, including photonic quantum computation and quantum networks. Ultra-wide superconducting strips with widths of tens of micrometers are desirable to achieve high polarization-independent detection efficiency using a simple straight strip. However, biasing the ultra-wide strip with sufficient superconducting current to make it sensitive to infrared photons is challenging. The main difficulty is maldistribution of the superconducting current in the strip, which generates excessive intrinsic dark counts. Here, we present a novel superconducting wide strip photon detector (SWSPD) with a high critical current bank (HCCB) structure. This HCCB structure enables suppression of the intrinsic dark counts and sufficient superconducting current biasing of the wide strip. We have experimentally demonstrated a polarization-independent system detection efficiency of ~78% for 1550 nm wavelength photons and a system dark count rate of ~80 cps using a 20-${\mu}$m-wide SWSPD with the HCCB structure. Additionally, fast jitter of 29.8 ps was achieved. The photolithographically manufacturable ultra-wide SWSPD with high efficiency, low dark count, and fast temporal resolution paves the way toward the development of large-scale optical quantum technologies, which will require enormous numbers of ultimate-performance single-photon detectors.