Direct calibration of click-counting detectors

Abstract

We introduce and experimentally implement a method for the detector calibration of photon-number-resolving time-bin multiplexing layouts based on the measured click statistics of superconducting nanowire detectors. In particular, the quantum efficiencies, the dark count rates, and the positive operator-valued measures of these measurement schemes are directly obtained with high accuracy. The method is based on the moments of the click-counting statistics for coherent states with different coherent amplitudes. The strength of our analysis is that we can directly conclude---on a quantitative basis---that the detection strategy under study is well described by a linear response function for the light-matter interaction and that it is sensitive to the polarization of the incident light field. Moreover, our method is further extended to a two-mode detection scenario. Finally, we present possible applications for such well-characterized detectors, such as sensing of atmospheric loss channels and phase sensitive measurements.