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Fast and accurate measurement of the polarization-dependent detection efficiency of superconducting nanowire single photon detectors

Authors :
Yue Fei
Tianhao Ji
Labao Zhang
Guanghao Zhu
Jingrou Tan
Jiayu Lv
Qi Chen
Guanglong He
Feiyan Li
Xiaohan Wang
Hui Li
Yanqiu Guan
Rui Yin
Hao Wang
Xiaoqing Jia
Qingyuan Zhao
Xuecou Tu
Lin Kang
Jian Chen
Peiheng Wu
Source :
Optics express. 30(20)
Publication Year :
2022

Abstract

Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) have been extensively investigated due to their superior characteristics, including high system detection efficiency, low dark count rate and short recovery time. The polarization sensitivity introduced by the meandering-type superconductor nanowires is an intrinsic property of SNSPD, which is normally measured by sweeping hundreds of points on the Poincaré sphere to overcome the unknown birefringent problem of the SNSPD’s delivery fiber. In this paper, we propose an alternative method to characterize the optical absorptance of SNSPDs, without sweeping hundreds of points on the Poincaré sphere. It is shown theoretically that measurements on the system detection efficiencies (SDEs) subject to cases of four specific photon polarization states are sufficient to reveal the two eigen-absorptances of the SNSPD. We validate the proposed method by comparing the measured detection spectra with the spectra attained from sweeping points on the Poincaré sphere and the simulated absorption spectra.

Details

ISSN :
10944087
Volume :
30
Issue :
20
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Optics express
Accession number :
edsair.doi.dedup.....3f595b0382cdf672d89a577b9e98cf59