Abstract
Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) deliver superior performance over their competitors in the near-infrared regime. However, these detectors have an intrinsic polarization dependence on the incident wave because of their one-dimensional meander structure. In this paper, we propose an approach to eliminate the polarization sensitivity of SNSPDs by using near-field optics to increase the absorption of SNSPDs under transverse magnetic (TM) illumination. In addition, an optical cavity is added to our SNSPD to obtain nearly perfect absorption of the incident wave. Numerical simulations show that the maximum absorption of a designed SNSPD can reach 96% at 1550 nm, and indicate that the absorption difference between transverse electric (TE) and TM polarization is less than 0.5% across a wavelength window of 300 nm. Our work provides the first demonstration of the possibility of designing a polarization-insensitive and highly efficient SNSPD without performing device symmetry improvements.
Highlights
Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) deliver superior performance over their competitors in the near-infrared regime
Because of the nanowire meander structure of SNSPDs, the absorption characteristics of the SNSPDs show an intrinsic sensitivity to the polarization states of incident waves[13,14], which can lead to restrictions in certain applications
Because the key information is unrelated to the photon polarization state, which may fluctuate during the process of fibre-optic transmissions, using an SNSPD with polarization sensitivity will result in an increased bit-error-rate of the transmitted keys, which is not desirable
Summary
Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) deliver superior performance over their competitors in the near-infrared regime These detectors have an intrinsic polarization dependence on the incident wave because of their one-dimensional meander structure. Because of the nanowire meander structure of SNSPDs, the absorption characteristics of the SNSPDs show an intrinsic sensitivity to the polarization states of incident waves[13,14], which can lead to restrictions in certain applications One such example is the quantum key distribution system based on the differential phase shifted keying method[15], in which all of the information is encoded into the phase difference between two nearby photons. Numerical simulations show that the maximum absorption of the designed SNSPD is 96% and the absorption difference between two polarization states is less than 0.5% across a wavelength window of 300 nm
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