Abstract
Superconducting transition-edge sensor (TES)-based single-photon detectors with high detection efficiency, low dark count rate and photon-number resolving capability are suitable for many scientific applications. We have developed a high-performance Ti TES-based single-photon detector at a working wavelength of about 1550 nm. The TES with a critical temperature of around 200 mK has an active area of 10 μm × 10 μm, which is manually aligned to an ultra-high numerical aperture fiber with a mode field diameter of 4 μm, leading to a nearly perfect coupling efficiency. The Ti TES integrated into an optical cavity consisting of a dielectric mirror and an anti-reflection coating exhibits an absorption efficiency of 97% at 1550 nm. The fabricated TES shows an energy resolution of 0.21 eV using a 1540 nm pulsed source, and it can resolve up to 20 photons. The measured system detection efficiency is 95% ± 0.4%.
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Acknowledgements
This work is supported partly by NSFC under Grants 12293032, 120101002, 12173097 and U1931123, the National Key R&D Program of China under Grant 2020YFC2201703, CAS under Grants GJJSTD20210002, Jiangsu Province under Grant BRA2020411.
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PZL and WZ wrote the main manuscript text. All authors reviewed the manuscript.
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Li, P., Zhong, J., Zhang, W. et al. High-Performance Ti Transition-Edge Sensor-based Photon-Number Resolving Detectors. J Low Temp Phys 214, 100–105 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-023-03015-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-023-03015-8