An Efficient Workflow of Modeling Single-Nanowire Based Single-Photon Avalanche Detectors

Single-photon detector (SPD) as an essential building block for detecting and counting photons, plays a fundamental role in quantum technologies. In this work, we propose an efficient workflow of modeling SPDs based on emerging one-dimensional materials, i.e. nanowires, utilizing avalanche breakdown in reverse biased condition. Comparing to another extensively studied platform, superconducting nanowire SPDs, avalanche nanowire device is demonstrated in this work to promise comparable performance (e.g. high photon detection efficiency (PDE) and and low dark count rate (DCR)) but without working at extreme cryogenic temperature (4K). The proposed workflow explored to maximize computational workload and balancing between time-consuming drift-diffusion simulation and fast script-based post-processing, and in timely convergence we were able to predict a suite of key performance metrics for single-photon SPDs, including breakdown voltage, PDE, DCR, and time resolution.