High performance of gated-mode single-photon detector at 1.55μm

• Published in: Optics communications Vol. 265; no. 1; pp. 126 - 131
• Main Authors: Wu, Guang, Zhou, Chunyuan, Chen, Xiuliang, Zeng, Heping
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01-09-2006; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Classical and quantum physics: mechanics and fields; Electronics; Exact sciences and technology; Optoelectronic devices; Photon counting; Physics; Quantum cryptography; Quantum information; Semiconductor electronics. Microelectronics. Optoelectronics. Solid state devices; Single-photon detection; Single-photon routing; Single-photon routing; Single-photon detection; Photon counting; Quantum cryptography; Ternary compound; Binary compound; Pulse width; Gallium arsenides; Single photon; Routing; Indium arsenides; Indium phosphide; Avalanche photodiodes; Quantum detector; Optical fiber; III-V semiconductors
• ISSN: 0030-4018; 1873-0310
• DOI: 10.1016/j.optcom.2006.03.053

High performances of single-photon detection at 1.55μm were achieved by operating InGaAs/InP avalanche photodiodes in the gated mode at the optimized temperature. As short pulses used in the gated-mode detection produce strong spikes, a transformer-based method was invented to cancel the spikes, which makes it possible to reduce the dark counts by using short-gate pulse durations, and to discriminate the avalanche signals at low thresholds. The spike-cancellation single-photon detection at the optimized temperature produced a detection efficiency of 20% with a dark-count probability of 3.4×10−7 per pulse. With such a single-photon detector, a stable single-photon routing was realized in 155km optical fibers with the average photon number 〈n〉=0.1 per pulse, exhibiting a fringe contrast of 87%.