High-efficiency Superconducting Nanowire Single-photon detectors
We are working in collaboration with NIST (S. Woo Nam and V. Verma) and JPL-NASA (M. Shaw and F. Marsili) to develop very efficient single-photon detectors in the near infrared. The detectors
are currently based on tungsten silicide WSi and works at cryogenic temperature, below 2K. The optical stack of the SNSPDs was designed for maximum absorption at 1064 nm by optimizing the thickness of the dielectric layers. System efficiencies close to 90% at 1064 nm are now achieved and can be used in our optical hybrid experiments.
Noise events are below a few counts per second.
Our recent paper reporting high efficiency detectors and the demonstration of a single-photon source with heralding efficiency greater than 90%: arXiv:1607.07459
Novel materials are also currently tested, such as MoSi.