Capacitive readout and gating of superconducting single photon detectors

We propose and develop a readout scheme for superconducting single-photon detectors based on an integrated circuit, relaxing the need for large bandwidth amplification and resulting in voltage steps proportional to the number of detected photons. We also demonstrate time gating, to filter scattered light in time and reduce dark counts. This...

Superconducting detector dynamics studied by quantum pump-probe spectroscopy

We explore the dynamics of superconducting single-photon detectors (SSPDs) on the picosecond time-scale using a correlated photon-pair source based on spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC), corresponding to a pump-probe experiment at the single-photon level. We show that the detector can operate in a regime where the two-photon detection...