Monday, April 23, 2012

1204.4594 (Tommaso Lunghi et al.)

Free Running Single Photon Detection based on a negative feedback InGaAs
APD
   [PDF]

Tommaso Lunghi, Claudio Barreiro, Olivier Guinnard, Raphael Houlmann, Xudong Jiang, Mark A. Itzler, Hugo Zbinden
InGaAs/InP-based semiconductor avalanche photodiode are usually employed for single-photon counting at telecom wavelength. However they are affected by afterpulsing which limits the diode performance. Recently, Princeton Lightwave has commercialised a diode integrating monolithically a feedback resistor. This solution effectively quenches the avalanche and drastically reduces afterpulsing. Here, we report the development and characterization of a detector module based on this diode, implementing an active hold-off circuit which further reduces the afterpulsing and notably improves the detector performances. We demonstrate free-running operation with 600 Hz dark count rate at 10% detection efficiency. We also improved the standard double-window technique for the afterpulsing characterization. Our algorithm implemented by a FPGA allows to put the APD in a well-defined initial condition and to measure the impact of the higher order afterpulses.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4594

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