Characterization of SuperSPAD using a source of correlated photon pairs

This paper presents an experimental investigation of temporal correlation measurements using a high-performance single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD), SuperSPAD, and a quantum source of photon pairs based on spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). The photon pairs generated through SPDC are correlated in time, energy, and momentum, enabling them to be used for characterizing the timing resolution of single photon detectors. A baseline optical setup is first established using Thorlabs commercial SPAD modules (SPDMA) with an SPDC source to evaluate timing resolution and coincidence statistics. We investigate the coincidence statistics using the same experimental framework with the SuperSPAD detector, which is specifically designed to achieve high performance in terms of count rate, sensitivity, timing precision, noise, and power consumption. We measure the coincidence timing difference distribution and analyze it using Gaussian fitting to quantify the timing resolution. With SuperSPAD and an SPDC source, we were able to achieve 16 ps rms of timing resolution, demonstrating its potential for time-precision quantum and other applications, including quantum communication, time-resolved spectroscopy, quantum imaging and sensing.