Timing performance of 30-nm-wide superconducting nanowire avalanche photodetectors

• Main Authors: Najafi, Faraz (Contributor), Marsili, Francesco (Contributor), Dauler, Eric A. (Contributor), Molnar, Richard J. (Contributor), Berggren, Karl K. (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Lincoln Laboratory (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Institute of Physics (AIP), 2013-09-18T15:10:04Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

We investigated the timing jitter of superconducting nanowire avalanche photodetectors (SNAPs, also referred to as cascade-switching superconducting single-photon detectors) based on 30-nm-wide nanowires. At bias currents (I[subscript B]) near the switching current, SNAPs showed sub-35-ps FWHM Gaussian jitter similar to standard 100-nm-wide superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors. At lower values of I[subscript B], the instrument response function (IRF) of the detectors became wider, more asymmetric, and shifted to longer time delays. We could reproduce the experimentally observed IRF time-shift in simulations based on an electrothermal model and explain the effect with a simple physical picture.
United States. Air Force (Contract FA8721-05-C-0002)