Design of a Fano-resonance-enhanced dielectric grating for ultralow-filling-factor superconducting nanowire single-photon detector

Abstract

Abstract Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) exhibit excellent performance in the near-infrared band, but their application range is limited by the detection efficiency and detection speed. In this paper, we propose a high-efficient and ultralow-filling-factor design scheme based on Fano resonance which is excited by a one-dimensional silicon dielectric grating. This design can reduce the kinetic inductance of the nanowires while maintaining the active sensing area of SNSPDs, which is beneficial for improving the recovery time of the detector. Meanwhile, the absorption efficiency of the nanowires can be enhanced by the Fano resonance. Taking λ = 1550 nm as an example, numerical simulations are performed using commercial simulation software based on the finite-difference time-domain method. Under idealized structural conditions, the absorption efficiency of the Niobium Nitride (NbN) superconducting nanowires can exceed 98% when the filling factor of the nanowire is only 10%.