Single Photon Detectors

David Alfonso Guzman Rincon

Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, 2500 chemin de Polytechnique,
Montreal, QC H3T 1J4, Canada
david-alfonso.guzman-rincon@polymtl.ca

Abstract: Several types of single photon detectors have arose, covering

different ranges of operation wavelengths including visible light and the
infrared spectra. Besides, they have different performances in terms of their
efficiency and dark count rates. The present article reviews the well known
photomultiplier tubes and avalanche photodiodes, as well as the most recent
quantum dot photon detectors and superconducting photon detectors. Their
principles of operation and recent achievements are the core of this article.
2008 Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal

References and links

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1. Introduction
Detection of light and measurement of its characteristics has been useful in many areas like
astronomy, control systems and communications. The most sensitive device capable of detect
light is a single photon detector, photon being the smallest package of radiation in nature.
Nowadays the interest to reach this physical limit of detection has increased, mainly to get
as much profit of optical communications as possible by entering into the quantum domain
of communication, and to contribute with the development of quantum computing by optical
schemes, which promises benefits such as secure quantum cryptography.
 Now the question is how to detect single photons. Actually there are more than a way to ap-
proach to the answer of this question, and that is what is developed in this article. We can group
the answers in the following four categories: photomultiplier tubes, semiconducting avalanche
photodiodes, semiconducting quantum dot detectors and superconducting detectors [1]. Each
type of solution has different characteristics in terms of efficiency, operation ranges and techni-
cal issues that determine the pros and cons used for evaluating their performance.
The main objective of this article is then to show these four ways of detecting single photons,
compare them and explore the actual state of development of each branch. We start with the
photomultiplier tubes in Section 2, exposing its action principle and its characteristics. Then is
introduced the semiconductor photon detectors where two main approaches exist, the avalanche
photodiodes in Section 3 and the most innovating quantum dots in Section 4. The recently
conceived superconducting photon detectors, which are developed as superconducting films
and superconducting nanowires, is exposed in Section 5.

2. Photomultiplier tubes
2.1. Operation
A photomultiplier tube (PMT or multiplier phototube in some literature) converts light flux into
electron flux, and then amplifies this generated current. This process starts with a photocathode,
an electron-optical input system, an electron multiplier and an anode [2], everything inside a
vacuum tube. The general scheme is showed in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Elements of a photomultiplier tube

The photocathode is the element that makes the conversion of a photon into an electron. This
occurs by a process called photoelectron emission [3, 4], where a photoemissive semiconductor
receives a photon of energy h that is absorbed and liberates an electron from the semicon-
ductor. Depending on the energy of the photon and the energy level of the electron involved
in the interaction, the electron can or cannot be taken from the semiconductor. In case that the
energy is sufficient to take the electron, the rest of the energy is transferred to the electron as
kinetic energy, which will be used in the process of amplification of the current. The minimum
energy needed to free one electron from a semiconductor (as well as for a metal) is called the
work function, and is noted as W , which is a property of the material. So, the maximum kinetic
energy of an electron generated by a photoemission process is

Emax = h W (1)
Because not every photon that arrives causes an electron emission, there exist a ratio of
the number of emitted electrons to the number of incident photons. This ratio is called the
quantum efficiency, and is usually denoted by . This notion is also valid to other types of
photon detectors, as is used in further sections.
Typical materials of photocathodes used in PMTs are silver-oxygen-caesium (AgOCs),
antimony-caesium (SbCs) and bialkali and trialkali compounds as SbKCs, SbRbCs and
SbNa2 KCs [2]. The sensitivities of the photocathodes are functions of the wavelength. The
wavelengths for which the sensitivity is maximum (max ) range from 235 nm to 800 nm, de-
pending on the photocathode. The quantum efficiencies at max typical values are between 8%
and 28%.
After the photocathode there is an electron-optical input system. It focuses the emitted elec-
trons to the next stage, regardless their energy or their origin place. Also, to distinguish the
correspondence between one electron and the incident photon is important to control the veloc-
ity of the initial electron, and then avoid any uncertainty from the origin of the electron.
Then comes the electron multiplier, which consists of a series of elements called dynodes
that generate a cascade of electrons by a process known as secondary emission. It increases
the number of electrons, but they also lose energy in their way. There is also the possibility to
lose an electron in between dynodes. The amplification that can be obtained from an electron
multiplier goes by a factor as high as 12.5 106 , for arrangements of 14 dynodes. There are
different performances in terms of time response, collection efficiency and gain stability de-
pending on the geometry of the dynodes arrangement. Several geometries are shown in Fig. 2.
Typical values of this amplification process goes from 105 to 106 and uses between 9 and 14
dynodes.

(a) Venetian blind (b) Foil (c) Box

Fig. 2. Some dynode configurations.

2.2. Achievements and limitations

The PMT in general has many problems to achieve a good performance when the objective is to
detect single photons instead of one considerable light flux. Also the wavelengths of operation
of such detectors are far from detecting wavelengths of interest for optical communications
such as 1300 nm and 1500 nm.

3. Avalanche photodiodes
The idea of operation of an avalanche photodiode (APD) is to convert the incident photon
into a cascade of moving carrier pairs (electron-hole pairs) in a semiconductor. It consists of a
photodiode with a high reverse bias, which makes the carriers accelerate, with enough energy
to excite new carriers in a process called impact ionization [3]. When one photon arrives, it is
absorbed and generates a carrier pair (Fig. 3). The electron (hole) is accelerated by the strong
electric field in the semiconductor. If the energy acquired by the electron before it collides
with other one in the semiconductor is enough to have an kinetic energy greater than the gap
energy Eg , it will liberate another electron. These two electrons continue gaining energy from
the electric field, and will collide with other electrons, and so on.

Fig. 3. Avalanche process in APDs.

Typical values of operation wavelengths for APDs are 700 nm < < 800 nm for those made
in Si, and 1 m < < 1.7 m for those made in Ga, InGaAs and InGaAsP.

3.1. Stopping the avalanche

To achieve single photon resolution in the detection process, an APD is used to operate in a
mode called Geiger mode, where exists an excess bias voltage VE above the breakdown voltage.
The problem with this situation is that the current amplification becomes infinite, needed to
make possible the detection of the photon, but there is a limit where the high current obtained
would destroy the device [5].
This implies that there must be a circuit in controlling the avalanche process, to avoid the
permanent damage of the APD. Those circuits are called quenching circuits, and they come in
several schemes, such as the passive quenching, the active quenching and the gated quenching
circuits.

3.2. Controlling the performance

Basically there are two parameters that can be externally controlled, namely the temperature
T and the excess bias voltage VE . Lets review what effects have both parameters in the APD
performance.
The quantum efficiency , as defined in Section 2.1, depends in this case on the probability
that a photon will be absorbed in the semiconductor layer (absorbtion efficiency), the proba-
bility that the carrier generated by the photon starts an avalanche process (trigger probability)
and on the optical coupling efficiency of the light to the device. If VE is increased, a quantum
efficiency greater than 10% could be achieved in InGaAs detectors and about 70% for silicon
detectors, but at the expense of increasing the noise.
Another performance indicator in photon detectors is the so-called dark-counting rate. This
gaves how many photons were detected, whenever there were no photon to be detected per
unit of time. In Si single APDs (SAPDs) the dark counting rate ranges between 10 to 100
dark counts per second, and for InGaAs or InP SAPDs goes from 100 to 1000 dark counts
per second. Reducing the temperature helps reducing the dark counting levels. Nevertheless at
certain T the tunneling effect dominates the process so reducing even more T would not have
such a noticeable effect. Another disadvantage in reducing T is a reduction in .
The dark counts are an usual error source, that in the case of APDs typically arises because of
avalanche residuals from previous detections. This effect is called afterpulsing. Those delayed
pulses can occur about a time of s after the original pulse was created. The probability of
having afterpulses increases as the flowing charge through the semiconductor increases. When
T is reduced, this process increases exponentially.
Then there should exist an optimized control system designed for each device. The best
performance in terms of improving , reducing dark counting rate and avoiding the afterpulsing
process can be obtained by adjusting T and VE .

4. Quantum dot photon detector

A different approach from APDs to single photon detection using semiconductors is using quan-
tum dots [6]. A quantum dot (or quantum box in some references as in Ref. [7]) are quantum
wells that restrict the movement of a charged particle (usually an electron) in zero dimen-
sions. Actually they are small volumes that have sizes comparable to the associated wavelength
(known as the de Broglie wavelength) so that the particle is kept in the quantum dot.
Particularly, if a quantum dot is exposed to a high magnetic field, the original discrete quan-
tum dot states evolve to generate about 3 to 4 continuous states called Landau levels [8]. The
actual condition that makes possible the generation of Landau levels is a weak potential con-
finement, r
hc
a  lc = (2)
eH
where a is the scale of confinement, and lc is the magnetic length.
The idea of detecting single photons with a quantum dot [6] is to take a relatively large
quantum dot (a increased) in a high magnetic field, making a weak potential scenario. Such
situation generates at least two energy Landau levels (Fig. 4(a)), where the lowest orbital is
denoted as LL1 and the first excited level is LL2. The magnetic field used in Ref. [6] is such
that the lowest level (LL1) is filled, and the second level (LL2) is partially occupied. At the
Fermi level is reported that LL1 and LL2 form two metallic regions which correspond to an
outer ring and an inner core respectively, as shown in Fig. 4(a).
When a far-infrared photon arrives to the quantum dot, it is absorbed making an electron go
to LL2 (Fig 4(b)). Being at this level it goes down in the same level to an empty position, giving
its energy excess to the lattice. Now, with the inner core (LL2) having an extra electron, and
then with a charge e, the quantum dot is internally polarized. This change in the inner core
allows an external current to flow by this level, acting as a switch while the electron stays in
LL2. The electron eventually decays to the level LL1, switching off the current flow. At this
time the quantum dot is ready to a new photon detection event.

(a) Structure diagram. Gray ar- (b) Energy levels, and the effect of an incoming pho-
eas are metallic regions formed ton.
by LLs.

Fig. 4. Quantum dot photon detector.

The size of the quantum dot used by the authors of Ref. [6] is 700 700 nm2 . The wave-
lengths of detection goes in the far infrared range, more precisely 175 m < < 275 m.
They detected single photons with a time resolution of 1 ms, an incident flux of 0.1 photons
per second, and with an effective detector area of 0.1 mm2 . The operation temperature of this
device is T = 0.4 K. Its quantum efficiency is = 1%, but the authors of Ref. [6] report that
this can be improved as their optical system is not optimized.

5. Superconducting detectors
The latest approach to detection of single photons is given by superconducting films or wires,
which make profit of the nonlinear characteristics of a superconductor material around its crit-
ical temperature Tc . Several experiments confirm their behavior in the regime of visible and
near-infrared wavelengths [1, 9].

5.1. Principles of operation

The superconductivity appears when the electrical resistance drops down dramatically at some
non-zero temperature, which is known as critical temperature Tc . This decrease in electrical
resistance is so large that it seems that the resistivity of the material goes to zero (Fig. 5).
Experiments performed until 1990 [10] demonstrate that the resistivity of a superconductor is
below 1021 cm, which is insignificant compared to the resistivity of a conductor as copper
in the order of 109 cm. However, the Tc temperature values are very low. The pure element
with the highest transition temperature is niobium, with Tc = 9.26 K and the element with the
lowest one is tungsten, with Tc = 0.012 K. Most superconductors are actually compounds and
not pure elements. One typically used compound is the NbN, who has a critical temperature
Tc = 16 K.

Fig. 5. Characteristic resistivity vs temperature plot for a superconductor.

Another characteristic of the superconductors is their energy gap , which depends on its
temperature. As the temperature increases, this gap is reduced until T = Tc when it disappears.
There is also an interest in superconducting films because they present characteristics that
cannot be found in regular superconductors. For example the aluminium has a critical tempera-
ture Tc = 1.2 K in its regular form, but when it is in a film structure, it has Tc = 2.1 K. It seems
that reducing the dimension of a superconductor increases its Tc .
5.2. Operation
A superconducting photon detector works at a temperature lower than Tc . The idea is to exploit
the energy gap as a function of temperature (T ), such that when a photon arrives with enough
energy to release one electron of the superconductor (E > (T )), then the electron obtained
creates an avalanche of quasiparticles [1], because of its high energy. If the concentration of
quasiparticles exceeds the equilibrium concentration of quasiparticles, the energy gap disap-
pears, and then the superconductivity disappears leading to a conducting behavior in a zone
called a hot spot (Fig. 6). This is then used as a switch, that is open most of the time, and is
closed when a photon arrives and generates a hot spot.

Fig. 6. Concentration of nonequilibrium quasiparticles across the width of the film when a
photon has been absorbed.

The process is similar in the case of superconducting wires, with one more dimension re-
stricted. The main difficulty in going to one dimension superconductor detectors is a consid-
erable loss of efficiency in the reception of the photon. However this situation can be handled
with external add-ons such as an optical cavity and an anti-reflection coating (ARC) [9].

5.3. Achievements and limitations

The operation temperature for the superconductor film photon detector reported in [1] ranges
between 1.8 and 3.0 K, with transition temperatures Tc of 4.4 K and 5.1 K. The dark counts
for that system depend on the applied current to the NbN detector. When the temperature is
lowered, the dark counts also decrease. With an applied current of the order of I = 1.25 A and
at Tc = 1.8 K the dark count rate is around 0.2 counts per second, while for the same current
at Tc = 3.0 K the dark count rate arises to the order of 102 counts per second. The wavelengths
detected by this NbN detectors are in the range 600 nm < < 2.4 m.
For the case of the superconducting NbN nanowire photon detector reported in Ref. [9] the
operation temperature is 1.8 K. The wavelengths detected were = 1060 nm with an efficiency
of 67% and = 1550 nm with an efficiency of 57%.

6. Conclusion
In the realm of single photon detectors the photomultiplier tubes have a fair performance in the
range of visible light, where they show quantum efficiencies as high as 28%, but typically of
the order of 10%. Their geometrical specifications have been improved by decades, so that their
drawbacks may be attributed to physical and not technical limitations.
The avalanche photodiodes work mostly in the near-infrared spectrum. The dark counts be-
come a relevant factor, and their quantum efficiency can be of the order of 10% for InGaAs
detectors and about 70% for silicon ones, if care is taken to reduce dark counts and avoid after-
pulses.
Quantum dot photon detectors appear as a new technique, which works in the far-infrared
spectrum, unexplored by precedent detectors. Low operation temperatures are required (T =
0.4 K), and optical optimization has to be made to improve their actual quantum efficiency of
1%.
Superconducting detectors have the same limitation in terms of temperature operation,
around a few K (T 5 K), with efficiencies up to 67% in the visible and near-infrared spec-
trum. As dark counts can be also reduced to an order of 1 count per second by reducing the
temperature, they appear as a promising avenue regarding single photon detection, expecting
related technical improvements.