Letter abstract
Nature Photonics 2, 302 - 306 (2008)
Published online: 13 April 2008 | doi:10.1038/nphoton.2008.51
Subject Category: Quantum optics
Superconducting nanowire photon-number-resolving detector at telecommunication wavelengths
Aleksander Divochiy1, Francesco Marsili2, David Bitauld2, Alessandro Gaggero3, Roberto Leoni3, Francesco Mattioli3, Alexander Korneev1, Vitaliy Seleznev1, Nataliya Kaurova1, Olga Minaeva1, Gregory Gol'tsman1, Konstantinos G. Lagoudakis2, Moushab Benkhaoul4, Francis Lévy4 & Andrea Fiore2
Abstract
Optical-to-electrical conversion, which is the basis of the operation of optical detectors, can be linear or nonlinear. When high sensitivities are needed, single-photon detectors are used, which operate in a strongly nonlinear mode, their response being independent of the number of detected photons. However, photon-number-resolving detectors are needed, particularly in quantum optics, where n-photon states are routinely produced. In quantum communication and quantum information processing, the photon-number-resolving functionality is key to many protocols, such as the implementation of quantum repeaters1 and linear-optics quantum computing2. A linear detector with single-photon sensitivity can also be used for measuring a temporal waveform at extremely low light levels, such as in long-distance optical communications, fluorescence spectroscopy and optical time-domain reflectometry. We demonstrate here a photon-number-resolving detector based on parallel superconducting nanowires and capable of counting up to four photons at telecommunication wavelengths, with an ultralow dark count rate and high counting frequency.
- Department of Physics, Moscow State Pedagogical University (MSPU), 119992 Moscow, Russian Federation
- Institute of Photonics and Quantum Electronics (IPEQ), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Station 3, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
- Istituto di Fotonica e Nanotecnologie (IFN), CNR, via Cineto Romano 42, 00156 Rome, Italy
- Institute of Complex Matter Physics (IPMC), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Station 3, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Correspondence to: Francesco Marsili2 e-mail: francesco.marsili@epfl.ch
Correspondence to: Francesco Marsili2David Bitauld2Andrea Fiore2 Present address: COBRA Research Institute, Eindhoven University of Technology, PO Box 513, NL-5600MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands