Detecting Single Photons with Quantum Vortices
Towards micron scale superconducting single photon detectors
Presentation
Abstract
Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors are one leading single photon detection technology today, with many current applications in quantum optics, quantum information processing, metrology, and astronomy. They are the dominant technology for high detection rates and telecom-wavelength detection. However, traditional nanowire detectors have stringent fabrication constraints and the detection rate has room for improvement. One possible solution is a new class of superconducting single photon detectors which are micron scale instead of nanometer scale, leading to less stringent fabrication constraints and faster reset times. These detectors have been theorized but have not been thoroughly explored experimentally. Specifically, there have been no published results of the creation of micron-scale superconducting detectors made with amorphous superconductors. In this talk, I will introduce the basic theory behind these vortex-based single photon detectors, and show progress towards the fabrication of these devices in amorphous superconductors using electron beam lithography.
Kyle, thank you for sharing your research. Hopefully you will be able to get back in the lab soon to test the vortex model. I am wondering if you can describe a little bit about what that testing entails? When you are in the lab doing this testing, what does that work include?
Great job on this presentation!
Hi Corey! Thanks!
To test these devices, we have to do a bit of work to connect to them electrically, but then we install them in our cryostat and cool down to about 0.8 Kelvin. Once they’re cold, we can send light into the cryostat through a fiber optic cable and look for pulses coming out of our amplifiers that indicate a photon has been detected. We can also decrease the intensity of light we send in and note that the frequency of pulses decreases, but not the size of each pulse, which proves that we are truly detecting individual photons.