Minimal timing jitter in superconducting nanowire single photon detectors

Abstract

Using two-temperature model coupled with modified time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equation we calculate the delay time ${\tau }_d$ in appearance of growing normal domain in the current-biased superconducting strip after absorption of the single photon. We demonstrate that ${\tau }_d$ depends on the place in the strip where photon is absorbed and monotonically decreases with increasing of the current. We argue, that the variation of ${\tau }_d$ (timing jitter), connected either with position-dependent response or Fano fluctuations could be as small as the lowest relaxation time of the superconducting order parameter $\sim \hslash /k_B{T}_c$ ($T_c$ is the critical temperature of the superconductor) when the current approaches the depairing current.

8 pages, 7 figures

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• Local thermal fluctuations in current-carrying superconducting nanowires
• Geometrical jitter and bolometric regime in photon detection by straight superconducting nanowire
• Jitter in photon-number-resolved detection by superconducting nanowires
• Low-dimensional platforms for single photon detection
• Magnetoconductance and photoresponse properties of disordered NbTiN films