Miniaturized superconducting single-photon detection system for airborne platform

Abstract

<sec>Facing the demand for applications such as wide-area terrain mapping and space-based atmospheric measurements, there is an urgent need to develop miniaturized single-photon detection systems with low power consumption that can be adapted to airborne platforms. Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) have been applied to quantum information, bioimaging, deep space communication and long-range lidar with the advantages of high quantum efficiency, low dark count rate and fast detection rate. However, traditional SNSPD usually operates at 2.1 K or even lower, and the required cryogenic systems are large in size and weight, which are not easy to apply to airborne platforms. Up to now, there has been no report on SNSPD applied to airborne platforms. How to apply SNSPD to airborne platforms is an urgent problem to be solved.</sec><sec>In this work, we design and make an SNSPD with an operating temperature of 4.2 K. The superconducting detector chip is a four-channel photon-number-resolving device with a photosensitive area of 60 μm × 60 μm, which is coupled to a 200-μm-diameter fiber by a beam compression system with a quantum efficiency of 50% at 1064 nm and a temperature of 4.2 K. Finally, the time characteristics of a single channel are tested in response to different photon numbers. The timing jitter of four-photon response is smallest, and the half-height width is 110 ps. This work not only supports airborne applications, but also has positive implications for promoting the development of general-purpose miniaturized SNSPD systems and their applications.</sec>