Photonic Readout of Superconducting Nanowire Single Photon Counting Detectors
Name
s41598-020-65971-5.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.43 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
f40c2cd55f70baecea41080f95b58819
Author(s) • • • • •
de Cea Falco, Marc
Wollman, Emma E.
Atabaki, Amir H
Gray, Dodd J.
Shaw, Matthew D.
Ram, Rajeev J
Date Issued
June 2020
Journal
Scientific Reports
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
de Cea, Marc et al. "Photonic Readout of Superconducting Nanowire Single Photon Counting Detectors." 10, 1 (June 2020): 9470 © 2020 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Scalable, low power, high speed data transfer between cryogenic (0.1–4 K) and room temperature environments is essential for the realization of practical, large-scale systems based on superconducting technologies. A promising approach to overcome the limitations of conventional wire-based readout is the use of optical fiber communication. Optical fiber presents a 100–1,000x lower heat load than conventional electrical wiring, relaxing the requirements for thermal anchoring, and is also immune to electromagnetic interference, which allows routing of sensitive signals with improved robustness to noise and crosstalk. Most importantly, optical fibers allow for very high bandwidth densities (in the Tbps/mm2 range) by carrying multiple signals through the same physical fiber (Wavelength Division Multiplexing, WDM). Here, we demonstrate for the first time optical readout of a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) directly coupled to a CMOS photonic modulator, without the need for an interfacing device. By operating the modulator in the forward bias regime at a temperature of 3.6 K, we achieve very high modulation efficiency (1,000–10,000 pm/V) and a low input impedance of 500 Ω with a low power dissipation of 40 μW. This allows us to obtain optical modulation with the low, millivolt-level signal generated by the SNSPD.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-65971-5