Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors integrated with tantalum pentoxide waveguides

Photonic integrated circuits hold great potential for realizing quantum technology. Efficient single-photon detectors are an essential constituent of any such quantum photonic implementation. In this regard waveguide-integrated superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors are an ideal match for achieving advanced photon counting capabilities in photonic integrated circuits. However, currently considered material systems do not readily satisfy the demands of next generation nanophotonic quantum technology platforms with integrated single-photon detectors, in terms of refractive-index contrast, band gap, optical nonlinearity, thermo-optic stability and fast single-photon counting with high signal-to-noise ratio. Here we show that such comprehensive functionality can be realized by integrating niobium titanium nitride superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors with tantalum pentoxide waveguides. We demonstrate state-of-the-art detector performance in this novel material system, including devices showing 75% on-chip detection efficiency at tens of dark counts per second, detector decay times below 1 ns and sub-30 ps timing accuracy for telecommunication wavelengths photons at 1550 nm. Notably, we realize saturation of the internal detection efficiency over a previously unattained bias current range for waveguide-integrated niobium titanium nitride superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors. Our work enables the full set of high-performance single-photon detection capabilities on the emerging tantalum pentoxide-on-insulator platform for future applications in integrated quantum photonics.