What is it about?
How precisely can we tell when a single photon arrives? Superconducting nanowire detectors are the gold standard for this task, but what happens when several photons hit at once? Detector’s internal physics—tiny fluctuations, electrical signal propagation, and heat dynamics—combine to change its “timing,” meaning both how fast and when the output signal appears. We built a physical model that captures these effects, matching experiments across many orders of magnitude in light intensity, something rarely achieved. With this understanding, we can explain why the timing gets better when multiple photons arrive together.
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Why is it important?
Precise photon counting underpins technologies from photonic quantum computing to quantum communication and LiDAR. Our findings link fundamental superconducting physics with practical detector design, suggesting how to build faster, more accurate, and photon-number-resolving detectors of the next generation.
Perspectives
Seeing how well the model matched several modified experiments was very satisfying. I hope this work inspires others to push detector performance even further and to explore how tuning each parameter can reveal the performance limits. (Spoiler: there’s still room to improve!)
Mariia Sidorova
PHYSIKALISCH TECHNISCHE BUNDESANSTALT
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Jitter in photon-number-resolved detection by superconducting nanowires, APL Photonics, August 2025, American Institute of Physics,
DOI: 10.1063/5.0273752.
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