Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a magnetic shielding architecture that scales the physical width of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) up to 0.1 mm (100 µm)—100 times wider than standard nanoscale SNSPDs and 20 times wider than previous state-of-the-art implementations. Published in Optica, the design uses active current “rails” to eliminate edge-current crowding, suppressing dark-count noise rates by 10 orders of magnitude while achieving near-unity detection efficiency across the mid-infrared spectrum. [ Wide-SNSPD Structural Architecture & Performance Metrics ] Physical Specifications Noise & Sensitivity Metrics Industrial & Scalability Impact • 100 µm (0.1 mm) [...]

Researchers developed a superconducting single-photon detector that uses wires more than 100 times wider than conventional devices.

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a magnetic shielding architecture that scales the physical width of superconducting nanowire…