Stable, high-performance operation of a fiber-coupled superconducting nanowire avalanche photon detector

Abstract

We present a stable and high-performance fiber-coupled NbTiN superconducting nanowire avalanche photon detector (SNAP). We demonstrate afterpulse-free operation in serially connected two SNAPs (SC-2SNAP), even in the absence of a choke inductor, achieving a 7.7 times faster response speed than standard SSPDs. The SC-2SNAP device showed a system detection efficiency (SDE) of 81.0% with wide bias current margin, a dark count rate of 6.8 counts/s, and full width at half maximum timing jitter of 68 ps, operating at 2.3 K.