Low-jitter timing systems for the fast readout of single-photon detectors

The usage of high-performance single-photon detectors, such as SNSPDs or SPADs, has become of crucial importance in the quantum communication and quantum imaging fields. To fully leverage their recent impressive jitter results (below 5 ps), a new generation of timing instrument is required. In this work, we present a 4.5 ps FWHM timing systems, that can perform photon timing at a count rate of 12 Mcps with a high linearity. The system is based on a low-jitter time-to-amplitude converter (TAC) combined with a fast analog-to-digital converter (ADC), delivering histogram and time-tagging data through a USB3 link.