Pulsed Gating With Balanced InGaAs/InP Single Photon Avalanche Diodes

We demonstrate balanced InGaAs/InP single photon avalanche diodes operated in gated mode for a data transmission rate of up to 20 MHz. The common-mode signal cancellation realized with the balanced configuration enabled detection of small avalanche pulses. For a laser repletion rate of 20 MHz at 240 K, the dark count probability for a photon detection efficiency of 13% is
$1.9\times 10^{-5}$
. The afterpulse probability is 0.3% for a 2 ns pulse width, hold-off time of 20 ns, and 10% PDE, at 240 K.