Extracting Photon-Number Information from Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors Traces via Mean-Derivative Projection
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| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866911521481687040 |
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| author | Kuijf, I. S. Baalbergen, F. B. Seldenthuis, L. van Nieuwenburg, E. P. L. de Dood, M. J. A. |
| author_facet | Kuijf, I. S. Baalbergen, F. B. Seldenthuis, L. van Nieuwenburg, E. P. L. de Dood, M. J. A. |
| contents | Photon-number resolved detection with superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) attracts increasing interest, but lacks a systematic framework for interpreting and benchmarking this capability. In this work, we combine principal component analysis (PCA) with a new readout technique to explore the photon-number resolving capabilities of SNSPDs and find that the information of the photon number is contained in a single principal component which approximates the time derivative of the average response trace. We introduce a new confidence metric based on the Bhattacharyya coefficient to quantify the photon-number-resolving capabilities of a detector system and show that this metric can be used to compare different systems. Our analysis and interpretation of the principal components imply that photon-number resolution in SNSPDs can be achieved with moderate hardware requirements in terms of both sample rate (5 GSample/sec) and analog bandwidth (3 GHz) and could be implemented in an FPGA, giving a highly scalable solution for real-time photon counting. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_13475 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Extracting Photon-Number Information from Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors Traces via Mean-Derivative Projection Kuijf, I. S. Baalbergen, F. B. Seldenthuis, L. van Nieuwenburg, E. P. L. de Dood, M. J. A. Quantum Physics Instrumentation and Detectors Optics Photon-number resolved detection with superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) attracts increasing interest, but lacks a systematic framework for interpreting and benchmarking this capability. In this work, we combine principal component analysis (PCA) with a new readout technique to explore the photon-number resolving capabilities of SNSPDs and find that the information of the photon number is contained in a single principal component which approximates the time derivative of the average response trace. We introduce a new confidence metric based on the Bhattacharyya coefficient to quantify the photon-number-resolving capabilities of a detector system and show that this metric can be used to compare different systems. Our analysis and interpretation of the principal components imply that photon-number resolution in SNSPDs can be achieved with moderate hardware requirements in terms of both sample rate (5 GSample/sec) and analog bandwidth (3 GHz) and could be implemented in an FPGA, giving a highly scalable solution for real-time photon counting. |
| title | Extracting Photon-Number Information from Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors Traces via Mean-Derivative Projection |
| topic | Quantum Physics Instrumentation and Detectors Optics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.13475 |