Niobium superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors

Anthony J. Annunziata; Daniel F. Santavicca; Joel D. Chudow; Luigi Frunzio; Michael J. Rooks; Aviad Frydman; Daniel E. Prober

doi:10.1109/TASC.2009.2018740

Niobium superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors

Anthony J. Annunziata, Daniel F. Santavicca, Joel D. Chudow, Luigi Frunzio, Michael J. Rooks, Aviad Frydman, Daniel E. Prober

Department of Physics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

42 Scopus citations

Abstract

We investigate the performance of superconducting nanowire photon detectors fabricated from ultra-thin Nb. A direct comparison is made between these detectors and similar nanowire detectors fabricated from NbN. We find that Nb detectors are significantly more susceptible than NbN to thermal instability (latching) at high bias. We show that the devices can be stabilized by reducing the input resistance of the readout. Nb detectors optimized in this way are shown to have approximately 2/3 the reset time of similar large-active-area NbN detectors of the same geometry, with approximately 6% detection efficiency for single photons at 470 nm.

Original language	English
Article number	5067018
Pages (from-to)	327-331
Number of pages	5
Journal	IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity
Volume	19
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/TASC.2009.2018740
State	Published - Jun 2009

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Manuscript received August 27, 2008. First published June 05, 2009; current version published July 10, 2009. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (EPDT) and by IBM Research. A. J. Annunziata was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. A. J. Annunziata, D. F. Santavicca, J. D. Chudow, L. Frunzio, and D. E. Prober are with the Department of Applied Physics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520 USA (e-mail: [email protected]). M. J. Rooks is with IBM Research at T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 USA. A. Frydman is with the Department of Physics, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TASC.2009.2018740 Fig. 1. SEM image of a Nb meander with coplanar waveguide in top left. The fill factor for this and all devices tested is 0.5; it appears less in this image due to substrate charging, which makes the gaps (bright) appear wider.

Funding

Manuscript received August 27, 2008. First published June 05, 2009; current version published July 10, 2009. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (EPDT) and by IBM Research. A. J. Annunziata was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. A. J. Annunziata, D. F. Santavicca, J. D. Chudow, L. Frunzio, and D. E. Prober are with the Department of Applied Physics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520 USA (e-mail: [email protected]). M. J. Rooks is with IBM Research at T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 USA. A. Frydman is with the Department of Physics, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TASC.2009.2018740 Fig. 1. SEM image of a Nb meander with coplanar waveguide in top left. The fill factor for this and all devices tested is 0.5; it appears less in this image due to substrate charging, which makes the gaps (bright) appear wider.

Funders	Funder number
EPDT
National Science Foundation
International Business Machines Corporation

Keywords

Detection efficiency
Kinetic inductance
Latching, single photon detector
Superconducting nanowire

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10.1109/TASC.2009.2018740

Cite this

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abstract = "We investigate the performance of superconducting nanowire photon detectors fabricated from ultra-thin Nb. A direct comparison is made between these detectors and similar nanowire detectors fabricated from NbN. We find that Nb detectors are significantly more susceptible than NbN to thermal instability (latching) at high bias. We show that the devices can be stabilized by reducing the input resistance of the readout. Nb detectors optimized in this way are shown to have approximately 2/3 the reset time of similar large-active-area NbN detectors of the same geometry, with approximately 6% detection efficiency for single photons at 470 nm.",

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note = "Funding Information: Manuscript received August 27, 2008. First published June 05, 2009; current version published July 10, 2009. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (EPDT) and by IBM Research. A. J. Annunziata was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. A. J. Annunziata, D. F. Santavicca, J. D. Chudow, L. Frunzio, and D. E. Prober are with the Department of Applied Physics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520 USA (e-mail: [email protected]). M. J. Rooks is with IBM Research at T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 USA. A. Frydman is with the Department of Physics, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TASC.2009.2018740 Fig. 1. SEM image of a Nb meander with coplanar waveguide in top left. The fill factor for this and all devices tested is 0.5; it appears less in this image due to substrate charging, which makes the gaps (bright) appear wider.",

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AU - Frydman, Aviad

AU - Prober, Daniel E.

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Niobium superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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Keywords

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