Abstract

Afterpulsing was investigated experimentally in an InGaAs single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) operating in the biasing and sensing regime of periodic-gating techniques. These techniques support single-photon counting at rates in the 100MHz range with low afterpulse probability and are characterized by sub-nanosecond active gates that limit total avalanche-charge flows to the 100 fC range or less. We achieved comparable gating and sensing performance with a system using non-periodic gates and were able to make traditional double-pulse afterpulse measurements from 4.8 ns to 2 mu s in this new low-avalanche-current regime. With 0.50 ns gate duration and a detection efficiency of 0.15 at 1310nm the per-gate afterpulse probability at 4.8 ns is 0.008, while with a 1.5 ns gate it is almost two orders of magnitude higher. We provide a quantitative connection between afterpulse probability and total avalanche charge, and between the performance observed in traditional gating techniques for InGaAs SPADs and those observed with periodic gating techniques.

Publication Details
Publication Type
Journal Article
Year of Publication
2012
Volume
59
Number of Pages
1465-1471
DOI
10.1080/09500340.2012.687463
Journal
Journal of Modern Optics
Contributors
Groups