High bandwidth photon detection enabled by a massively parallelized system

Bülter, Andreas;Tillmann, Max;Wahl, Michael;Röhlicke, Tino;Wernicke, Doreen;Wolff, Martin;Häussler, Matthias;Walter, Nicolai;Stegmüller, Robin;Beutel, Fabian;Pernice, Wolfram;Schuck, Carsten;Rödiger, Jasper;Langer, Torsten;Gerecke, Mario;Ortmann, Uwe

Abstract

One key challenge in transferring single-photon based quantum technologies from a laboratory environment ‘into the field’ are the limited count rates achievable with today's hardware based on individual detection units. To overcome this limitation we have developed key components pushing beyond the bandwidth-limit of single devices with a massively parallelized (x64) single-photon detection system. Here, detector elements based on superconducting nanowires are optimized for lowest reset times and highest temporal resolution. On-chip (FPGA) data processing over all detector channels provides a viable solution to pre-process the potentially massive amount of initial data which is demonstarted in a QKD experiment.