The rapid development of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors over the past decade has led to numerous advances in quantum information technology. The record for the best system detection efficiency at an ...The rapid development of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors over the past decade has led to numerous advances in quantum information technology. The record for the best system detection efficiency at an incident photon wavelength of 1550 nm is 93%. This performance was attained from a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector made of amorphous WSi; such detectors are usually operated at sub-Kelvin temperatures. In this study, we first demonstrate superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors made of polycrystalline NbN with system detection efficiency of 90.2% for 1550-nm-wavelength photons at2.1 K, accessible with a compact cryocooler. The system detection efficiency saturated at 92.1% when the temperature was lowered to 1.8 K. We expect the results lighten the practical and high performance superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors to quantum information and other high-end applications.展开更多
基金supported by the National Key R&D Program of China(Grant No.2017YFA0304000)Strategic Priority Research Program(B)of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(Grant No.XDB04010200)+1 种基金the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.91121022,61401441,and61401443)the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality(Grant No.16JC1400402)
文摘The rapid development of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors over the past decade has led to numerous advances in quantum information technology. The record for the best system detection efficiency at an incident photon wavelength of 1550 nm is 93%. This performance was attained from a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector made of amorphous WSi; such detectors are usually operated at sub-Kelvin temperatures. In this study, we first demonstrate superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors made of polycrystalline NbN with system detection efficiency of 90.2% for 1550-nm-wavelength photons at2.1 K, accessible with a compact cryocooler. The system detection efficiency saturated at 92.1% when the temperature was lowered to 1.8 K. We expect the results lighten the practical and high performance superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors to quantum information and other high-end applications.
