We report on high-efficiency superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors based on amorphous WSi and optimized at 1064 nm. At an operating temperature of 1.8 K, we demonstrated a 93% system detection efficiency at this wavelength with a dark noise of a few counts per second. Combined with cavity-enhanced spontaneous parametric down-conversion, this fiber-coupled detector enabled us to generate narrowband single photons with a heralding efficiency greater than 90% and a high spectral brightness of 0.6×104 photons/(s⋅mW⋅MHz). Beyond single-photon generation at large rate, such high-efficiency detectors open the path to efficient multiple-photon heralding and complex quantum state engineering.
@article{arxiv.1607.07459,
title = {High-efficiency WSi superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors for quantum state engineering in the near infrared},
author = {H. Le Jeannic and V. B. Verma and A. Cavaillès and F. Marsili and M. D. Shaw and K. Huang and O. Morin and S. W. Nam and J. Laurat},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1607.07459},
year = {2016}
}