Demonstrating sub-3 ps temporal resolution in a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector

Understand

Improving the temporal resolution of single photon detectors has an impact on many applications, such as increased data rates and transmission distances for both classical and quantum optical communication systems, higher spatial resolution in laser ranging and observation of shorter-lived fluorophores in biomedical imaging.

• In recent years, superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) have emerged as the highest efficiency time-resolving single-photon counting detectors available in the near infrared.
• As the detection mechanism in SNSPDs occurs on picosecond time scales, SNSPDs have been demonstrated with exquisite temporal resolution below 15 ps.
• We reduce this value to 2.7$\pm$0.2 ps at 400 nm and 4.6$\pm$0.2 ps at 1550 nm, using a specialized niobium nitride (NbN) SNSPD.