Superconducting NbN-Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors
Capable of Photon Number Resolving

A. Korneev, A. Divochiy, M. Tarkhov, O. Minaeva, V. Seleznev, N. Kaurova,
B. Voronov, O. Okunev, G. Chulkova, I. Milostnaya, K. Smirnov and G. Gol’tsman
Moscow State Pedagogical University, Moscow 119992, Russia
E-mail: akorneev@rplab.ru 

Abstract - We present our latest generation of ultra-fast superconducting NbN single-photon detectors (SSPD) capable of photon-number resolving (PNR). The novel SSPDs combine 10  μm  x 10  μm active area with low kinetic inductance and PNR capability. That resulted in significantly reduced photoresponse pulse duration, allowing for GHz counting rates. The detector’s response magnitude is directly proportional to the number of incident photons, which makes this feature easy to use. We present experimental data on the performance of the PNR SSPDs. These detectors are perfectly suited for fibreless free-space telecommunications, as well as for ultra-fast quantum cryptography and quantum computing.

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Received December 14, 2007; accepted March 14, 2008.  Reference No. ST34; Category 4.                
Paper accepted for Proceedings of EUCAS 2007; published in JPCS 98 (2008), paper # 012307