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Timing jitter induced by stochastic baseline fluctuations in high-count-rate superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors

Dianpeng Wang1,2,3, You Xiao1,2, Jiamin Xiong1,2, Chenrui Wang1,2,3, Zhen Wan1,2, Hongxin Xu1,2,3, Chaomeng Ding1,2,3, Jia Huang1,2, Lixing You1,2,3 et al.

Hao Li1,2,4,*

  • 1Shanghai Key Laboratory of Superconductor Integrated Circuit Technology, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China
  • 2National Key Laboratory of Materials for Integrated Circuits, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China
  • 3Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
  • 4Shanghai Research Center for Quantum Sciences, Shanghai 201315, China

  • *Contact author: lihao@mail.sim.ac.cn
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Phys. Rev. Applied 26, 024049 – Published 18 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/8yf7-blyh

Abstract

Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) have demonstrated timing jitter in the few-picosecond regime, yet their timing resolution deteriorates substantially under high-count-rate operation. Existing interpretations mainly attribute this degradation to deterministic waveform distortions, such as multiphoton responses and pulse pile-up; however, the experimentally observed jitter broadening at high count rates cannot be fully accounted for within this picture. Here, we show that stochastic baseline fluctuations arising from finite-memory readout dynamics constitute an intrinsic source of the count-rate-dependent timing jitter in SNSPD systems. For stochastically arriving photons, overlapping recovery responses accumulate in the readout chain and generate statistically fluctuating baselines, which are converted into timing uncertainty through threshold-based timing extraction. We develop a stochastic-process framework that quantitatively connects photon statistics, readout dynamics, and timing jitter. The framework predicts characteristic scaling behaviors, including a nonmonotonic dependence of baseline fluctuations under pulsed excitation with a maximum near half of the repetition frequency. These predictions are quantitatively verified through systematic variations of count rate, circuit time constant, and detector dynamical properties. Our results identify stochastic baseline dynamics as a fundamental mechanism limiting timing resolution in high-count-rate SNSPD operation and provide a general framework for optimizing finite-memory high-speed photon-counting systems.

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Phys. Rev. Applied 26, 024049– Published 18 August, 2026
  • Received 14 May 2026
  • Revised 10 July 2026
  • Accepted 21 July 2026
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