We demonstrate a compact all-fiber polarization-independent up-conversion single-photon detector based on integrated reverse proton exchanged periodically poled lithium niobate waveguides. The horizontally and vertically polarized components of randomly polarized signals are separated with a fiber-coupled polarization beam splitter, launched into two orthogonally polarized polarization maintaining fibers and fetched into two adjacent independent waveguides on the same device. The up-converted outputs from both waveguide channels are then combined with a multi-mode fiber combiner and detected by a silicon detector. With this configuration, the polarization-independent single-photon counting at 1.55 um is achieved with a system detection efficiency of 29.3%, a dark count rate of 1600 counts per second, and a polarization dependent loss of 0.1dB. This compact all-fiber system is robust and has great application potential in practical quantum key distribution systems.
@article{arxiv.1903.05814,
title = {Compact all-fiber polarization-independent up-conversion single-photon detector},
author = {Long-Yue Liang and Jun-Sheng Liang and Quan Yao and Ming-Yang Zheng and Xiu-Ping Xie and Hong Liu and Qiang Zhang and Jian-Wei Pan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.05814},
year = {2020}
}