Compact control circuit of the InGaAs photon counter

摘要

We are presenting the design, construction and performance of the compact control circuit of the InGaAs photon counter. The main design goals were to construct a detector control circuit, which enables the InGaAs photon counters to operate in gated mode, the detection window width adjustable 3-10 ns with repetition rate reaching 2 MHz. The short detecting window requires the nanosecond rise/fall edges of gating pulse. The gating pulse minimum amplitude of 5 Volts is needed. The control circuit consists of the gate signal receiver, level converter, gate driver, avalanche breakdown sensor and a detector bias control circuit with fast current limiting option. The entire circuit has been tested in connection with different InGaAs detection chips operated at room temperature and thermoelectrically cooled with gate width in the range of 3 to 10 nanoseconds and gate repetition rate up to 5 MHz. The entire circuit is quite compact 60 x 60 mm in size, it is powered with external stabilized supply +5 V and -6 V. Although the main foreseen application was quantum cryptography, the control circuit can be used in connection with various avalanche photodiodes and in different applications.