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NbN superconducting nanowire single photon detector with efficiency over 90% at 1550 nm wavelength operational at compact cryocooler temperature

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Abstract

The rapid development of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors over the past decade has led to numerous advances in quantum information technology. The record for the best system detection efficiency at an incident photon wavelength of 1550 nm is 93%. This performance was attained from a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector made of amorphous WSi; such detectors are usually operated at sub-Kelvin temperatures. In this study, we first demonstrate superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors made of polycrystalline NbN with system detection efficiency of 90.2% for 1550-nm-wavelength photons at 2.1 K, accessible with a compact cryocooler. The system detection efficiency saturated at 92.1% when the temperature was lowered to 1.8 K. We expect the results lighten the practical and high performance superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors to quantum information and other high-end applications.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Lab of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200050, China

    WeiJun Zhang, LiXing You, Hao Li, Jia Huang, ChaoLin Lv, Lu Zhang, XiaoYu Liu, JunJie Wu, Zhen Wang & XiaoMing Xie

  2. CAS Center for Excellence in Superconducting Electronics, Shanghai, 200050, China

    WeiJun Zhang, LiXing You, Hao Li, Jia Huang, ChaoLin Lv, Lu Zhang, XiaoYu Liu, JunJie Wu, Zhen Wang & XiaoMing Xie

Authors
  1. WeiJun Zhang
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  2. LiXing You
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  3. Hao Li
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Correspondence to LiXing You.

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Zhang, W., You, L., Li, H. et al. NbN superconducting nanowire single photon detector with efficiency over 90% at 1550 nm wavelength operational at compact cryocooler temperature. Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 60, 120314 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-017-9113-4

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