Single-photon Detection With Lower Timing Jitter Based On Avalanche Photodiode

Near-infrared single photon detection is nowadays widely applied to the quantum key distribution(QKD),eye-safe ranging,as well as photonic research in quantum information science.The timing jitter distribution of the single photon detectors,which directly affects the accuracy of the detection system,has been one of the most important parameters,especially in laser ranging.In this paper,a novel single photon detector based on InGaAs/InP avalanche photodiode(APD)was designed and fabricated,which essentially comprising the gating wave generation,the avalanche photodiode,the single-photon source and the processing circuits for avalanche signal.In order to suppress the gate transient response,we used the low pass filter to discriminate the avalanche signal.Moreover,considering the timing jitter caused by fluctuations in amplitude and width of the avalanche signals,a limiting amplifier was applied to convert the avalanche signals with changing amplitude to digital signals,and it turns out that the timing jitter of our detector was reduced to 43ps.