Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors: physics and applications

Understand

Single-photon detectors based on superconducting nanowires (SSPDs or SNSPDs) have rapidly emerged as a highly promising photon-counting technology for infrared wavelengths.

• These devices offer high efficiency, low dark counts and excellent timing resolution.
• In this review, we consider the basic SNSPD operating principle and models of device behaviour.
• We give an overview of the evolution of SNSPD device design and the improvements in performance which have been achieved.