Abstract
The available high speed InGaAs/InP-based single-photon avalanche detectors (SPAD) are normally worked at fixed gate or narrow tunable gate frequency. However, a wide tunable gate frequency or even free running single photon detectors at high speed would be very useful in quantum key distribution, quantum entanglement distribution and so on. Here, we present a high speed InGaAs/InP-based single photon avalanche detector (SPAD) with tunable gate frequency from 900MHz to 1000MHz which also can work under the room temperature without any cooling setups. Instead of restricting the spike noise by self-differencing or filtering method, we use an Analog to Digital Converter(ADC) to sample the output voltage of the APD. Through the sampled voltage we can discriminate an avalanche signal from the noise. Based on the sampling method, a room temperature SPAD is implemented with a dark count rate of 2.5 × 10−5 per gate and afterpulse probability of 1.3%, given the condition that detection efficiency of 10.6%, dead time of 1ns, and clock frequency of 1GHz. The wide tunable gate frequency makes the SPAD very suitable for practical use and commercial producing.
Highlights
Single-photon detector is a key device in many applications, such as quantum key distribution (QKD),[1,2,3] quantum entanglement research,[4,5] few-photon imaging[6] and ultrasensitive spectroscopy.[7]
At near infrared telecom wavelengths, while upconversion with periodically poled LiNbO3 (PPLN) suffers from high sophisticated optical alignment for noise rejection[13] and superconducting device requires cryogenic cooling to temperatures of around a few kelvin,[9] InGaAs avalanche photodiodes (APDs) are widely used in many practical applications due to their compact and cryogen-free practicality
We present a high speed digital sampling single photon avalanche detector (DS-SPAD), which can work at tunable gate repetition frequency at room temperature
Summary
Single-photon detector is a key device in many applications, such as quantum key distribution (QKD),[1,2,3] quantum entanglement research,[4,5] few-photon imaging[6] and ultrasensitive spectroscopy.[7]. Alternative scheme has been tried using ADC logic circuit to process the signals,[23] and it worked at fix gate repetition frequency of 1GHz. In this work, we present a high speed digital sampling single photon avalanche detector (DS-SPAD), which can work at tunable gate repetition frequency at room temperature.
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