Afterpulsing studies of low-noise InGaAs/InP single-photon negative-feedback avalanche diodes

Abstract

We characterise the temporal evolution of the afterpulse probability in a free-running negative-feedback avalanche diode (NFAD) over an extended range, from $\sim 300$ ns to $\sim 1$ ms. This is possible thanks to an extremely low dark count rate on the order of 1 cps at 10% efficiency, achieved by operating the NFAD at temperatures as low as 143 K. Experimental results in a large range of operating temperatures (223–143 K) are compared with a legacy afterpulsing model based on multiple trap families at discrete energy levels, which is found to be lacking in physical completeness. Subsequently, we expand on a recent proposal which considers a continuous spectrum of traps by introducing well-defined edges to the spectrum, which are experimentally observed.

Keywords:

• single photon counting
• InGaAs/InP
• NFAD
• free-running
• afterpulsing
• low noise

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Erratum

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Mark Itzler and Anthony Martin for useful discussions. This work was supported by the Swiss NCCR QSIT project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.