Impedance-Matched Differential Superconducting Nanowire Detectors

Abstract

Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) are the highest-performance photon-counting technology in the near infrared, but traditional designs typically trade off between timing resolution and detection efficiency. The authors utilize transmission-line engineering and differential readout to achieve a design with high detection efficiency and low jitter simultaneously. This design also enables imaging capabilities and photon-number resolution, and is compatible with commercial time taggers. The device is a versatile solution for photon counting in various applications, including quantum computing, quantum communication, biomedicine, and ranging.