Table 3.
Comparison of SNSPD and TES operating at ~ 1550 nm. For SNSPDs, since (engineering) trade-offs and optimization required for a specific metric often prevent a single device from achieving peak performance across all categories, we show figures of merit of the state-of-the-art SNSPD exhibiting approximately 90% system detection efficiency or higher, along with PNR capability, low timing jitter, and/or high count rates
| Type | SNSPD (NbTiN) [188]) | SNSPD (NbN) [189] | SNSPD (NbN, 32 pixels) [195] | SNSPD (NbTiN, 28 pixels) [191] | TES (W) [128] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| System detection efficiency |
99.5%@1350 nm 94%@1500 nm |
97.4%@1550 nm, 98.2%@1590 nm | 97.5%@1555 nm | 88%@1550 nm | 97% |
| Dark count rate | 300–500 cps | < 100 cps | 20 cps | 60 cps | < 0.1 cps* |
| Timing jitter | 30 ps | 66 ps | 382 ps (for 1 photon), 40.4 ps (for 32 photons) | < 80 ps | 58 ns* |
| Maximum count rate | ~ 10 Mcps** | 20 Mcps** | 41.7 Mcps** | ~ 250 Mcps** (> 1 Gcps with 4 chips) | > 1 MHz |
| PNR capability | No | No | Pseudo-PNR (8 photons) | Pseudo-PNR (8 photons) | True-PNR (7 photons) |
| Operating temperature | 2.7 K | 0.8 K | 0.85 K | 0.8 K | 0.012 K |