A Simple and Robust Method for Estimating Afterpulsing in Single Photon Detectors

Single photon detectors are important for a wide range of applications each with their own specific requirements, which makes necessary the precise characterization of detectors. Here, we present a simple and cost-effective methodology of estimating the dark count rate, detection efficiency, and afterpulsing in single photon detectors purely based on their counting statistics. This methodology extends previous work [IEEE J. Quantum Electron., vol. 47, no. 9, pp. 1251–1256, Sep. 2011], [Electron. Lett., vol. 38, no. 23, pp. 1468–1469, Nov. 2002]: 1) giving upper and lower bounds of afterpulsing probability, 2) demonstrating that the simple linear approximation, put forward for the first time in [Electron. Lett., vol. 38, no. 23, pp. 1468–1469, Nov. 2002], yields an estimate strictly exceeding the upper bound of this probability, and 3) assessing the error when using this estimate. We further discuss the requirements on photon counting statistics for applying the linear approximation to different classes of single photon detectors.